I want them to have happy childhoods. I want them to look back on growing up and feel like they'd give the experience at least three-and-a-half out of five stars.
So we've put them in activities. We've had play-dates and sleepovers. I've baked birthday cakes and made Halloween costumes. We've volunteered to be sponsors for stuff.
But all of this is contrary to my personality.
I'm not a joiner by nature. I don't feel comfortable with it. I don't want to be the room parent, sit on the executive committee of the PTA or be in the booster club.
I watch people who do this sort of stuff and like it. I'm even friends with them. I admire them. But I don't understand them. At all.
So when we moved here I figured that I could be more true to my personality. My kids are older. The parents of the kids they go to school with aren't my friends, so I don't care what they think about my involvement--or lack thereof.
I've somewhat adopted a "don't ask" and "don't offer unless specifically asked" policy.
If my kids don't ask to do it, I don't offer it. If someone doesn't specifically ask me to do something, I don't volunteer.
When the automated computer calls every evening from the school, I don't answer.
I know. Lazy.
J brings me the papers in her backpack once every three months or so. I think when it gets so full that she can't get her own stuff in it anymore. The last time she brought me the stack I realized we had missed deadlines for a basketball camp, volleyball camp, after school choir program, and tryouts for the community theater musical. I don't ask for her papers every day because honestly? I don't want to know. I don't want to know that I'm supposed to be selling raffle tickets, getting sponsors for a Spell-A-Thon, making soup for teachers, or taking my kid to a dance team clinic.
I'm already overwhelmed by the position papers, debates, and science fair projects that are for a grade. And frankly, that stuff already takes way too much time away from the full-scale depression and pity-party I'm trying to have here.
Enter the elementary school sock hop.
I got the email last week sometime. It said "sock hop" in the subject line. I didn't even open it. Whatever it was, I wasn't interested.
But then J and a friend were hanging out one day. And J's friend's mother mentioned it. In front of J. As in, "Is J going to the sock hop on Friday?"
You know where this is going, I'm sure. Yep. Sock Hop.
Which meant a costume. No problem. We have a dress-up box. It has a poodle skirt in it. With a huge sticky stain on it. Fantastic.
So one late night and four hours of sleep later, we had this:
Poodles are so 1950. The 2014 sock hop girl wears a cat skirt.
These people who organize this stuff weren't born last night, that's for sure. Turns out, this sock hop isn't drop-off. If your kid wants to go, you have to stay. It's sold as a fun evening for the "whole family." Which I totally get. I do. You couldn't pay me enough to be in charge of any activity where as many as 800 kids might be left in my care with no parent supervision. It's why I've never aspired to be an elementary school principal. Ever.
But let's face it. There's nothing about this evening that was going to be fun for MY whole family.
So at 6 pm on Friday night, J, her friend, and I head to the school for two hours of sock hop fun. They looked amazing. Really.
And I prepared to endure two hours in a dark multi-purpose room, surrounded by hundreds of strangers. Say what you want about e-reader apps on smartphones, but the Kindle app has proved to be a very faithful friend in these situations.
I told the girls to have a great time, found a corner, and settled in with my "book."
I'm not a totally rotten mother. I looked up every now and then to check on the girls.
And as the evening wore on, I found myself looking up more and reading less.
There was a "best dressed" contest. These guys got second place.
It may be second place, but it got the best prize.
I watched my girl giggle, dance, laugh, and hang out with her girlfriends.
She even dragged ME out on the floor and tried to teach me some moves. The upside of knowing absolutely no one is that I don't think the dance lesson disaster was caught on film anywhere.
At some point during the course of the evening my perspective changed.
Instead of seeing this experience as a "good mom duty," I began to view it as the treasure it truly was.
My baby girl is twelve.
There will be more dances. Some of them will even have themes.
But all too soon, they will start being drop-off.
There's a possibility that she will promise me anything she can think of to keep me from volunteering to chaperon them.
Instead of giggling and laughing and dancing with her girlfriends in a costume that I got to help make, she'll shyly navigate dancing with boys. She'll tell me that she's not wearing a costume, because none of her friends are.
Some day, boys will come pick her up at our house and take her to these dances. My job will be to pay for the dress and take some "before" pictures for her to post on Instagram.
Hopefully, she'll still come home with a smile on her face and tell me that she had "the best time," but it will be a different kind of "best time."
In the grand scheme of things, this is such a short season of her life. And last Friday night was an inconsequential event.
But I'm so glad I got to be a part of it.
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