As the mother of four children I rarely find myself agreeing to be anywhere earlier than 10 a.m. That’s partly because it isn’t an easy task to get four little ones dressed, fed, strapped into car seats and off while under any kind of time pressure. The other part is because I’m not a morning person and I hit the snooze button too many times.
I have a tendency to be five or ten minutes late for anything and everything. I like to blame it on the kids, but my husband has known me too long. He knows the truth. My biggest problem? I never do just one thing. As we get ready to go somewhere in the morning, I have a sudden urge to clean the living room or clean the bathroom mirror. I just can’t stand the thought of returning home to a messy house. Or worse, what if something happened to me and my mother-in-law had to deal with my messy house?
The easy solution would be to clean the night before, but besides being late to everything, I’m also a procrastinator.
So I was especially proud of myself last week. I was up at 6 a.m. without hitting snooze once. I had the two oldest dressed, fed and off to school. I had the diaper bag packed including favorite toys and blankets. I had all of my stuff and the kids’ stuff in the van. The van was all warm and ready to go.
I dressed the two little ones without getting anything on me. I loaded them into the van and made it to the new childcare 10 minutes early. Yes, early! I felt like I had finally figured everything out.
I was on a roll. At work I was getting all kinds of things done. I was thrilled. With lunchtime approaching, I splurged on some Chinese. I walked into the office thinking of the sesame seed chicken I was about to devour when the look of my co-workers faces made my heart skip a beat.
“I’m so glad your back. We were going to go get them, but,” they said handing me a note. I immediately thought there was a problem with my two little ones.
“We were going to go get them off the bus.” I was dazed and confused trying to make sense out of the senseless. It wasn’t even noon yet. Why were they talking about buses? “The bus driver said Grandma wasn’t home and wanted to know where she should drop off the girls.”
I had it all figured out. My first day back in the working world was supposed to work like a well-oiled machine. Two oldest on the bus at 7 a.m. The little ones at child care by 7:30. I’d be at work at 8 a.m. The two oldest would be dropped off at Grandmas at 3 p.m. I even planned to get out of work early in order to go to the parent-teacher conference at 4 p.m. And that was where I made my mistake.
Parent-teacher conferences meant school was only a half day. Now my two oldest kids were riding around on the bus with nowhere to take them to. Realization was dawning as I dialed the number to the bus driver. I apologized profusely and she was nice about it. She assured me I wasn’t the only parent who’d forgotten about the half day. I quickly gave her directions to childcare.
Hanging up, I dialed my brand new childcare provider feeling like a complete idiot. I told her about the change and she was great.
“Not a problem,” she assured me.
Hanging up the phone I breathed a sigh of relief. My co-workers had brainstormed thinking of ways they could help before I’d gotten there and were frustrated when they realized there wasn’t anything they could do. They couldn’t even tell me because I was out of the office when the call came in. The kids were safe now. I didn’t have to leave work and they would be taken care of, but I wasn’t feeling any better.
In fact, as all of the possibilities of what could have happened started occurring to me, I was feeling even worse. As it was, my two oldest kids were being dropped off at a place they had never been before. Would they be upset? I wondered. I waited a half hour and then called to make sure they had arrived safely and were adjusting well. Again, my new childcare provider was great. They’d arrived and were fitting right in.
Relieved, I was able to go back to work. But as I continued working, stray thoughts would enter my mind. I continued to beat myself up.
Later that day, when I picked up the kids they were all smiles and didn’t want to leave. Looking at them, I didn’t notice any scars from the experience.
I was relieved, but I knew I had added “Dumb Mommy Move #2,547″ to the list I keep in my head. Worse, it wasn’t just a dumb mommy move. It was a Major Dumb Mommy Move.
I started my dumb move list on the day my first daughter was born. Her fingernails were soft and long and bent over the tip of her finger. I found the clippers I’d packed in my hospital bag and started to lovingly clip her overgrown nails. Her hands were so tiny. Just as I went to nip a tiny fingernail, she jerked her little body. Blood gushed out of her finger where I’d nipped it instead of the nail and her cries filled my ears. (OK, my hubby claims “gushed” is way overstating it, but that’s how I felt at the time.)
I make at least one “dumb mommy move” a day. As I become more experienced with this mommy thing, I hope to reduce that number. Or at least cut down on the number of Major Dumb Mommy Moves.
Copyright © 2000 Linda Sherwood
