Etticoat Junction: Farewell MOPS

All grown up and heading out the door to Kindergarten

It’s a big day in our household – it’s Liam’s first day of kindergarten. We did “meet the teacher” for an hour yesterday morning and all went well. He is actually going back to the same school where he went for pre-K last year and so not only is the school familiar, his old classroom (and beloved teacher) is right next door and many of the same kids from last year are in his class. But some of his best friends are not – and he knew that – and he admitted to feeling “funny in my tummy about kindergarten” on the drive to the campus. Happily that had changed to “I’m so excited” by the time we left and he liked his new teacher (she has long hair – in Liam’s eyes that confers god-like status J.) It’s going to be a great year.

And it’s the end of an era. As the mom of a kindergartner – I’m no longer a member of the MOPS sorority – Mothers of Pre-Schoolers. I feel like I’m coming out of a siege. Being a MOPS has been the most satisfying, delightful, joyful time of my life – but it has also been five and a half long years of juggle, juggle, juggle when what you are trying to hold up with one hand is a baby so you’re pretty damn sure you don’t want to drop it! In the other hand you have your only visible means of financial support – your job – which also in my case happens to be a career that I have dedicated myself to and nurtured for 22 years (really, it was that long?) prior to being a mother. So you’re not too keen to see that lying in shards on the floor either. “No problem” you tell yourself as your gird your loins (after labor you actually know what your loins are!) and get ready for the fray – “millions of women do this, I can too.” Five and a half years in, you are like millions of women – you are doing it, but you never quite stop wondering – how?

Fact is you just don’t do anything as well as you would like to on an ongoing basis – and you learn to accept that cause if you don’t you are a crazy, stressed out, constantly cranky working mom that nobody – including you – wants to be with. You learn to laugh at yourself a lot more. Really – it’s funny rather than mortifying when you realize that you: are wearing your underwear inside out, wore a racer-back bra under a dress with a deep-V back to a business meeting, ran out of gas because you forgot to fuel the car, forgot to pack your toiletry bag for a business trip, turned up with a present for a girl instead of a boy to one of the endless pre-school birthday parties that you get invited to because who knew that Trace was also a boy’s name, missed crazy sock day at preschool (yet again) because you lost the preschool monthly calendar (yet again), left your kid’s lunch box sitting on the dining room table, only realized you had left your wallet at home after the check-out girl had rung up that huge trolley of groceries, etc. etc. etc.

For the first three or four years you often wonder how it is that every other mom seems to be doing it better. By the fifth year you hopefully have at least one or two mom friends (the fact that sometimes becoming a mom requires a whole changing of the guard in your own friends will be the subject of a post all of its own.) Those precious mom friends will admit that their life seems perfect just by virtue of smoke and mirrors and that they too spend a lot of time wondering how everyone else is doing it with what seems like less effort and less chaos. It makes you feel better – though I’m not sure why. It doesn’t reduce any of the challenges in your life – but it does help you feel as though you are not constantly failing the grade. And the one piece of advice that these women all share is that “it does get easier as your kids get older.”

And so it does. As I prepare to go and wake Liam and do my impression of Nemo the fish jumping all over his father shouting “First day of school, first day of school” I know that I can: go and take a shower without having to wheel his high chair into the bathroom so I can keep my eye on him; walk the dogs with him walking beside me instead of having to deal with a stroller at the same time; feed the dogs without worrying that he’ll crawl over and eat the dog food; tell him to go and put on the clothes that are laid out on his bed and by the time I have repeated myself five times he may have actually done it; and sit patiently in the front seat of the car while he struggles (but ultimately succeeds) to put on the seat belt around his booster seat by himself.

But best of all I can still pretend to be the tickle monster when I wake him up, cuddle him while he has his morning milk, and kiss him at least half a dozen times before I say goodbye to him for the day. There are some things about being a MOPS that I never want to give up.