Silence Of The Mind: Back To School Edition

by: Elexis Penner

 

So the kids went back to school a couple of weeks ago and we’ve all had a chance to settle into routine. And by routine, I mean the freight train of forms and schedules and lunches and mornings and the recurrent wardrobe horn-lock, with them imploring in their best Captain Barbossa brogue, “But Mom, the dress code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.”

 

And, like everything else, with the return to school, comes the return of the voices.

 

It usually starts with the voice of Mother Superior (or the inverse). This voice starts out in mid-August, when the murmurings of back to school begin. When the vibe of bored kids and quarrels and ‘I’m so ready for routine!!’ starts to make its way into facebook posts and water cooler chats.

 

That’s when the voice is smug and reminds me of my superior motherliness that pines for more summer days, romping in the fields together, collecting monarch caterpillars and milkweed. The voice tells me that surely I love my children more than most mothers because of how content I am to be with them.

 

As a parent of teens, I seem to have handily forgotten how involved those days of 24/7 actually were. How some moments weren’t so pretty. How, on some days, my kids probably would have been better off being raised by a pack of hyenas than existing within screeching distance of their own mother.

 

And the reality is that I’m actually at work several days a week, as are the kids. The reality is that they don’t mind those days when I’m not home to boss them around. Could my non-glee about Back-To-School have anything to do with, “Mom, you just don’t want school to start because there won’t be anyone at home to clean the house all day…”

 

Or… could it have to do with the fact that I struggle with the juggling act of school and sports and music and church and I bet there was something I forgot... Maybe. Ah well, who has time for reality, when denial is so much more bearable.

 

On a side note… I think I might have some helpful tips on the best way to get your kids to be responsible for their lives – okay, maybe not the BEST way, but an effective way. Okay, one way. The secret is to not do things for them. Don’t remember their activities, don’t pack their hockey bag, don’t make their lunch. Don’t do any of that stuff.

 

Granted, this strategy is often mistaken for neglect, and to the untrained eye it can look a lot like lazy parenting. And it is the inherent posture of the disorganized mom. But, when they learn not to depend on you for the little things like packing extra food for the game, or reminding them to take their clarinet, or remembering to pick them up from places, or just generally keeping their lives straight – they start to do it for themselves.

 

Or they don’t. It’s not an exact science.

 

Anyway... when the reality of Back-To-School hits, Mother Superior’s voice is gradually drowned (read stomped) out by the voice of Dead Beat Mom.

 

Dead Beat Mom is triggered when the ‘First Day Of School’ pics start rolling down my facebook feed, some replete with Pinterest-grade props. These are fun – I’m not knocking it. It’s just that these are the things I would always think of a tad too late, and to be honest, I wasn’t even home on the first day of school – which isn’t the end of the world – but Dead Beat Mom hints that maybe it kinda was.

 

Dead Beat Mom whispers on about my ineptitude when I talk to other moms and realize that some parents actually know what courses their kids enrolled in, in which semester, and on what days their practices are... And I’m standing there nodding, thinking, “I’m pretty sure they’re all in the even grades this year.”

 

I’m not saying one way is better than the other. Okay the not my way probably IS better than the other, but that’s not the point.

 

The point, and the good news is that neither of these voices are helpful or true. The bad news is that we (I?) tend not to catch on to that while they’re humming in my ear. I fall for it almost every time.

 

The only things that I have figured as helpful here are to recognize these two harpies for who they aren’t – they are not God, and maybe they are not even truly me, either. It’s very hard to believe this sometimes, because the gloomy, self-deprecating one does actually sound a lot like me – especially when she goes on and on about that thing with the thing last year. Or the year before. Ugh.

 

When I catch myself, the only thing I can think to do is to shut it all down. I do this at the beginning of the day, and it’s harder to remember as the day goes on – but I know that at least something carried forward.

 

I read this by Cynthia Bourgeault, “… there is silence and then there is silence. There is an outer silence, an outer stopping of the words and busy-ness, but there is also a much more challenging interior silence, where the inner talking stops as well.”

 

And I’ve noticed that this is a really, really good place to meet God – it’s almost as though He waits there.