Most Wonderful Time or Black Tuesday?

7:15 Everyone awake and almost dressed.

7:30 Hair brushed and tied (a wasted effort on Girl #2 who will yank out braids somewhere in between snack and gym); kids fed, photographed; everyone antsy.

7:50 Walk to school with Girl #1. A quick kiss outside the door and she’s gone -- a nervous bundle of new-school-outfit trying so hard to be calm.

8:00 Waiting on That Man to pick me up.
8:03 Waiting.
8:05 Kind of pissed.
8:07 Did he go to the wrong corner? Forget about me? Decide to take Girl # 2 to school all by himself and deny me the pleasure? Is he lost? Can’t find Giant Three Year Old’s shoes? Does he EVER listen?
8:09 Waiting. Wave to friends in cars. Try to look casual and relaxed.

8:10 That Man, Girl # 2 and Giant Three Year Old pick me up on corner to drive the three blocks to the next school where we will not a find a place to park.

8:15 Get dropped off. Walk Girl # 2 up to her classroom, send her off with a Hang Loose hand gesture; do not receive one back. Leave anyway.

8:25 Greeted by friends who have dropped off daughter; they serenade us with “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…”

8:35 That Man drops Giant Three Year Old and me at home. We are alone together again.

8:45 Self-satisfied sip of ice coffee (graciously purchased by thoughtful husband, the coffee that made him late; feel mild guilt for earlier crankiness); make list for the day.

8:50 Receive email from friend who calls today “Black Tuesday” -- I think she is sobbing on her keyboard.

8:53 Make note to self: figure out if I am more “Most wonderful time…” or Black Tuesday kind of mom.

9:30 Giant Three Year Old mosies into kitchen: “Well, that’s that. Let’s go pick them up.”

You can imagine what happened from there – pretty much the 30 minute intervals of peace and play and activity punctuated by “Is it time yet?” “How about now?” “Now?” And then, naturally, when it finally was time, he couldn’t be bothered to go anywhere, didn’t like the way his shoes felt, wanted to buckle himself (oh lord), and needed in some OCD way to get in and out of the car four times once we made it to the school to pick up Girl # 2. (This last effort would have had me perplexed and googling “compulsivity in preschoolers” but he saved me from that when he smiled, all nasty-like, upon his final exit, and said, “Mama, is this funny or pissed off?”)

Then it was onto the schoolyard and the gaggle of anxious parents of new Kindergartners sifting through the more seasoned school vets, all of them waiting for their kids to unload from the building. Everyone was neatly dressed and all of them, or most, were making the same kind of huggy-kissy love that comes with the first pick-up on the first day back at school.

Me? I slunk to the corners, sucking my summer sitting-on-the-beach-all-day-too-much-beer belly in and hunkered down by the stairs where my child would soon descend. I tugged at my t-shirt, held my son’s hand and realized how lucky I was to never feel this way all through school and wondered why I was feeling this way now.

A lovely woman came over, an almost-friend (you know that kind? the kind who should be a better friend and you’re always just on the verge of getting there but your spontaneous bumping-ins come at the worst times, like at the grocery store with three kids?) – that almost-friend greeted me so warmly, with such encouraging non-small-talk kind of talk that it was just the thing I needed to get over my first-day jitters.

My daughter came soon enough and was happy (read: exhausted) enough to escape quickly with me. And we did. Home to greet Girl # 1 who walks home. No homework tonight, but forms to fill out, and routines to begin, which we did, despite the coaching meeting I needed to attend at 6pm with all three in tow. (The meeting was outdoors. Seems good right? But Giant Three Year Old learned that stomping on bleachers makes an hellaciously gigantic noise.)

Off to bed with them. Me alone. That Man on a business trip. Nothing on TV. Time to get back to that earlier note to self.

“Most wonderful time?” No. It was a great summer all in all, despite our lack of camps, and I already miss our lazy mornings and knowing them the way I did these last few months, even when they were pissing me off. Black Tuesday? No. I am happy to see them off and curious as to what will become of them this year. And after Thursday, when preschool starts, maybe I’ll get that haircut I am so desperately in need of, or just drive around for four hours, ALONE, in my car.

It is in some strange in between place that I find myself now. All gangly and misshapen and weird in my skin, as I felt this afternoon at pick-up, so I am when it comes to me as mom now. I’m not the mom of three under five anymore (to be pitied? to be helped?) and I’m not quite the mom of three who are all off to school and sports and friends’ houses (early empty nest? begging to have tiny bodies at home, sweaty heaps to cuddle up to?).

I think I am the gawky tweener of Momdom.