GROUNDHOG DAY
I have often felt that my school morning life was like the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray keeps living the same day over and over and over…….
My Itinerary
Drive #1 son (pray he gets out of the car); talk about dog
cry on way home to get #2 son
Drive #2 son (pretend that everything is perfect and talk about Yankees)
cry
Pick #1 son up for lunch, a necessary evil (anxiously ask about school, but pretend to be positive)
Drive #1 son back to school (fingers crossed)
Breathe a sense of relief if he makes it……
If he doesn’t make it……
cry and look up unaffordable private schools
Pick #2 son up from school………ask about school, but get very little information
Pick # 1 son up from school……..blab my way all the way home out of anxiety
AND IT STARTS ALL OVER AGAIN THE NEXT MORNING!
The ride to school was always tricky. I was very careful about managing my anxiety on that drive. I’m sure I wasn’t fooling anyone, especially my kids.
Many of you are in this boat. There gets to be a point when you might be driving to 3 different schools in one morning. Yep! Carpooling would have been awesome, but it was anxiety provoking…….I couldn’t mess with the “system.”
Switching gears between the boys, coupled with high anxiety, made me feel like a split personality.
My first drive – IF my #1 son actually made it downstairs – consisted of me chirping about whatever the current interest was, but my “go to” was usually a story about something funny our dog did……..
My #2 son didn’t have to get to school until after his brother and THAT car ride conversation was completely different. I chirped about anything specific to him….. usually the Yankees or what we thought our crossing guards did on their free time and if they were competitive for certain cross walks……
At a certain point I’m not really sure if I can tell you how much of the anxiety was just mine!
I was treading water and I didn’t even know how tired I was until I stopped!
So much of my life has been wrapped up in my boys, for which I have definitely taken criticism … although I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world. As they are older and pretty much blow me off, I find myself embarking on a new chapter, and this blog is a part of it. It’s been a process of putting my brain back together, finding my own thoughts and not hearing someone else’s voice in my head…….or bearing someone else’s anxiety.
It’s as if I have been holding my breath for a very long time, and I have just come up for air…..
Preach it, sister!!!! Right on the nose, again. I was just thinking about this subject last week, in the middle of a rant up the Garden State Parkway, on one of my twice-daily round trips to drop/fetch The Boy at his internship in Newark (Yay! He got the internship! Wait. Oops, there goes my life.) The rant was the usual — could we just hit the road ten minutes earlier, bosses really do care if you’re late, you need a good letter from this lady, etc. I was definitely causing the emotional breakdown that was getting ready to occur. And then I remembered an old trick from high school. Our drive down the hill was .4 miles, but in the mornings he was usually running too late to do that, and I had this mini-rant about the importance of promptness (yes, I do see that I am actually the problem in this case). One day I hit upon the idea of listening to Laugh USA on satellite radio, and it was INSTANT MAGIC. He laughed instead of crying! (I only had to remember to tune in and shut up!) So, last week, I tuned in, and sure enough, the old magic worked like a charm. Can’t believe it took me all summer to remember that.
Isn’t amazing how once you getting ranting and preaching it’s like eating a big ice cream sundae with every topping and you just can’t stop and then when you realize you have eaten the whole thing and licked the bowl you are full of remorse….
LOVE the idea of laugh radio!!!!!!! Great way to cope!
I still find myself at that rant-your-own sundae bar, and I can see myself going off, even as I’m doing it …. I agree, I love the idea of comedy radio; it would be worth getting satellite radio just for that!
I always make sure my Rant Sundaes have really plump cherries, because there are already so many nuts . . . .
This post brought back so many memories of those mornings. In my head, it was like this: “What can we talk about what can we talk about. Um. Oh! Look at that squirrel. I wonder if it will do something funny before we drive by! Um, what activity is he looking forward to we can talk about that. Oh! I know! That funny thing that happened last summer! Why can’t that funny song come up NOW! Uh-oh, he’s starting to cry. Crap.” Yeah. Crazy Town, USA. Satellite radio is definitely worth the expense.
Oh God, Martha! You said it so well! It’s like grabbing at straws. You’re just praying for some distraction that can alleviate the tension!
I had a sundae at 8 am this morning trying to get my son ready to leave the house! It seems I have a lot of these “sundaes”. I should cut back.
Sigh……it feels so good going down, though….
I’m ’bout to dig into a new one right this minute, if The Boy doesn’t get himself to that car for the morning road rally. Just checking in while I spin my wheels!
They do say its not good to hold it all in, maybe the “sundaes” are necessary for our survival. I do notice that no matter how big my sundae is, my son’s behavior remains unaffected. I guess it’s just for me. How indulgent of me(:
OMG, hilarious and so true! And I never even thought of that before!!!
It’s sooooooooo true that you can go on and on and on with the same result……why does it feel so good?