The Mommy Time Warp

So I seriously overestimated the content of my character and the depth of my maternal devotion when I decided that the kids didn’t need to start camp before July 11th. I just kind of figured the last week of school is so chaotic they’d want time to relax afterwards, then the big holiday weekend would eat into the following week, during which I’d plan some educational excursions to the Museum of Natural History and the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, the latter which I have always wanted to visit.

Please don’t let me forget what I solemnly swear to you RIGHT NOW: next year those mofos are not starting camp July 11th or even the 5th, but on June twenty-last-day-of-school-th. Theoretically July 11th is right around the corner, but this week-and-a-half of not getting any work done and spending each day doing nothing more meaningful than grocery shopping and endlessly driving the kids around seems to have warped time to such an extent that I have no idea of what day or hour it is.

And then today, one simple tweet suddenly made me realize how freakin’ good I have it, driving children who can read and play computer games and get themselves food and drink to playdates/swim practice where I can drop them off and not see them for [sometimes] hours!  By contrast, Anna at Random Handprints told her kids they had to nap until a certain hour  in order to get that sacred block of mommy-time when you can simply exhale and be a person again, and then fantasized about moving the clock hands forward so they would have to “sleep” longer. Moving the clock hands forward to maximize your time spent without children–who would do such a horrible thing?

Why, me, of course. Except I didn’t just do it to my kids–I did it to an entire classroom.

My youngest daughter started in her big sister’s former co-op nursery school when she was 2-and-a-half years old, the absolute youngest age at which one could enroll a child. The director was a stickler about the 2-and-a-half cutoff, but since I’d started working again and we were talking about kid #3, so was I: the Diva began her school career on Tuesday, February 10th. Suddenly 2.5 hours twice a week (during which her older sisters were in elementary school) were mine to drink a cup of coffee and blissfully work at my computer in an empty house, even sneak in a kickboxing class now and again at the gym I finally joined. After having 3 kids in 5 years, during most of which I stayed at home, I felt like I’d won the lottery…until that sneaky Mommy Time Warp caught up with me.

Mommy Time Warp: I am pushing a double-stroller full of chunky baby and enormous toddler with one hand while trying to hold the hand of the active preschooler with the other so she does not get run over by a car. Huffing and puffing and feeling overwhelmed and fat and exhausted, I am stopped by an attractive woman slightly older than me who is carrying a delicious-looking and sophisticated latte instead of offspring-appendages. “How adorable!” she exclaims, “ENJOY this time, it goes so FAST!” and I want to punch her. When you are in the thick of the Mommy Years time does NOT go fast; in fact, each day seems to last an eternity, the hours melting into one continuous morass of milk and tears and sweat and delicious fat little bums and dirty diapers and sleepless nights and kids’ shows with horrendous ear-worm songs that make you wish you still had the bandwith to smoke as much weed as you used to.

Oh, and guess what? The Mommy Time Warp inverts when you reach “half-day” nursery school and you soon realize that in that whopping “half a day” you have time to either work out, have your Morning Constitutional, check your email, do a tiny bit of work (if you are lucky enough to have that), or go grocery shopping, but no more than a combination of 2 of these at the very best: Oh my god I just dropped her off and wiped my ass and now it’s time to go back and get her again??? Where did the time go?  Yet insidiously, if your kid is in a co-op nursery school and you are scheduled to be the Helping Parent  once a month, you really are dealing with a Dali-esque situation where each minute is 2.5 hours unto itself. Your own kid is one thing; your relationship is such that you have managed to convey that a variety of behaviors are acceptable as long as we don’t do certain things mommy just can’t deal with. Other people’s kids, strangely, never got this memo, and after approximately 2 hrs. of high-pitched whines and snotty noses that don’t like to be blown and toys that cannot be shared and graham crackers that are smacked open-mouthed, crumbs a-flyin’, a certain parent volunteer might just decide that enough’s enough.

In my defense, I do believe that the particular Melting Clock Time Warp Parent Helper day in question also included crapped pants, but I couldn’t swear to it at this point. The teacher had left the room to get the kids’ art projects and I was supposed to be reading them a story for what she presented as the last few minutes before 11:30 dismissal. Wearily I sat in the chair above the class assembled on the carpet and dutifully tried to read from some large storybook while simultaneously displaying the pictures outward to the inevitable clamor of “I can’t SEE!” Glancing upward at the clock over my head, I noticed it read 11:15. NO FUCKING WAY that could be right!!! I seriously had been in that classroom for a year, the teacher wasn’t back yet but the smell of coffee wafted suspiciously down the hall, and I was almost done with the story that no one could see. So I did what any reasonable person in a cell whose jailer has fallen asleep and dropped the big fat ring of keys through the bars would do: I reached up and moved the clock hands to read 11:30.

When the teacher came back she looked at the clock and exclaimed guiltily: “Oh my,” (because of course nursery school teachers actually talk like that). “I guess we’d better get ready for pick-up!”

The Diva’s pictures were assembled, her hat and coat on in record time. “Need me to stay and help with…no? Oh, great, well, it was fun, see you next month!” When we blew through the front door the first of the parents, the ones who were always the earliest, had just started to arrive and and looked perplexed at the sight of the entire class in their coats ready to go a full 10 minutes earlier than usual. Sorry guys, I thought as I gunned the engine of our minivan, just a little Mommy-Time Revenge….