G-d must have a really great day when she/he created crossing guards. At least when Millie, our crossing guard, was brought into this world. If not for her, I would never have survived Tuesday morning. If life had a rewind button, by 8:05 a.m., I would have worn it out.
Tuesday morning was a disaster. To say that getting three girls out the door, not to mention one mama to work, is not an easy task would be the understatement of the century. Getting three girls and one mama out the door when there's only one functioning bathroom takes some planning. We have shower charts, chore charts, music practice charts, pretty much charts for about everything. But still the mornings are chaotic and stressful. So, after a particularly difficult Friday morning, I came up with what I thought was the chart of all charts, the chart to top the charts. In other words, I had created the holy grail of charts.
The concept was simple and based on something near and dear to our family's heart - baseball. We watch a lot of baseball and almost exclusively, the Colorado Rockies. What makes the Rockies such a pleasure to watch is the remarkable lack of ego display and overall inspiring team effort. I want our family to be like the Rockies. And I want to be as calm and collected as Rockies Manager, Jim Tracy. And with these two goals in mind, I created the Home Run Morning Chart with four easy steps to encourage self-responsibility and to reduce the over-dependence on Mama as our household morning Sisyphus, pushing my family up the hill to their day and having no energy for my own day.
I picked up the color laminated charts and explained the concept to the girls. Every morning you can hit a home run by just doing four things without any prompting, nagging or more likely, yelling from Mama. Choose to not do one of the tasks and and you lose the chance to hit a home run. Hit a home run every school day and the team will win a prize.
Monday went smoothly. So smoothly that we even did the Rockies high five line before we left for school and work. And then Tuesday happened. Or didn't. And I was not a happy camper. To keep the sports analogy, I was more like Billy Martin or Bobby Knight. Not a great start to the day.
I won't go into the details - they're too ugly and too exhausting to recount. All I can say is that by the time I dropped the girls off at school, their heads were hanging low and all of us had red noses and eyes from crying. No one, including me, was going to hit a home run that morning.
I parked the car near school and we waited at the corner for our crossing guard to signal that it was safe to cross. The four of us walked across the street, said our teary good-byes and I sent the three on their way, feeling pretty crummy that all of our days had started out in such a bad way.
As I crossed back across the street, Millie, our much beloved crossing guard, asked me if I was all right. Millie is from the Bronx, is a mother and grandmother and has lived in the neighborhood for over 20 years. She sees everything and doesn't miss a trick. She gives the kids candy on Halloween and Valentine's Day and comforted me on the first day back at school after my dad died. If all that was not enough, Millie is the only person I've ever known who can get my ex-New Yorker husband to wait at the corner and stop a lifetime habit of jaywalking. She's a classic, real New Yorker, gruff and soft, warm and funny. So when she asked me if I was all right, I knew I could give her the real answer.
She slowly nodded her head and told me it was going to be all right. She'd been through the same with her kids, and even though it was perfectly normal, it was important to set the bar high and hold them accountable. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, tomorrow will be better. And I believed her. In less than two minutes, Millie had restored my belief that hard mornings get easier and to not take it all so seriously, but to commit seriously to the work of being a good parent.
I've been in lots of therapy. Talk, somatic, rebirthing, couples and lots in between. I believe in therapy as a a kind of personal oil change that I seem to need once every decade. But I'd never had Crossing Guard Therapy and I've got to say, it worked like a charm.
By the time I picked up the girls from school that afternoon, we were back to our usual selves. We talked about what had gone wrong that morning. I told the girls that while Monday was a high five effort, we had to remember that one game doesn't make a season. What makes a season is showing up for each of the 162 days with the same attitude as the first day of the season. And I realized that besides the immediate need of more order, less chaos and an easier time for me in the morning, the larger lesson I'm trying to impart is how important it is to show up for yourself. In Judaism, the first prayer of the day is one of thanks for the opportunity to have another day to live, make mistakes, love and all the rest: Modah Ani Lefanecha, Ruach Chai, Vekayom. Another chance to show up and try to get it right for yourself, your loved ones and the world.
By Wednesday morning, we were back on track, just like Rockies' gut-wrenching win after two horrendous losses. No high five line, but when Millie asked me how the morning had gone, the smiles on all our faces was all the answer she needed.
Thank you, Millie - for delivering my kids and all the other kids who've been lucky enough to cross your street to school with safety, love and that watchful, knowing nod, that I realize now is intended more for the parents than the kids. And thank you for your Crossing Guard Therapy, which delivered this all too often over the top Mama back to my day with wisdom and humor.
Modah Ani Lefanecha, Ruach Chai, Vekayom.
Selah.
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