Forgive me, for I have not volunteered
Volunteer Spot is all about, well, volunteering. When Carissa asked me to post, I laughed, because I’m the least qualified mom on the planet to talk to you about how to be a great school volunteer. I spent my career as a preschool mom actively avoiding all calls to action, making one batch of homemade play-dough per year and bitching mightily about the need to do so when you can buy perfectly good Play-Doh at Target. If money was due for anything, I was that mom running up to the room mom’s SUV at carpool line trying to wave her down before she drove off so I could pass her a $20.
But this year my kids are in kindergarten, and I’ve signed up to be a room mom and a library volunteer, and it’s largely because I’ve spent the past three years not volunteering.
So let me tell you about not volunteering. This side of the story is important, and it’s not something you hear a lot.
Listen closely if you’re a room mom, desperate to fill your sign-up sheets with bright-eyed parents. When you see that same mother screeching to the curb minutes before the bell sounds every morning, sporting the same yoga pants, dirty hair, and streaked mascara she’s had on every other time you’ve seen her, remember this story. The class Halloween party may be the least important thing in her life right now; she may be hanging on by a thread.
This is why
Our twins started preschool when they were two years old. They went three mornings a week, and there were requests for room moms, for volunteers for the parent council, for parents to make play-dough, for parents to bring party supplies and food for various holidays.
My father was dying, nearing the end of a 12 year battle with cancer, and I looked at those sign-up sheets and made a conscious choice not to put my name on any of them. I was exhausted, having spent the summer going to my parents’ house almost every weekend to spend time with my father, watching as he deteriorated before our eyes. I was still reeling from postpartum depression when his health really started to spiral, and in those days I never went anywhere without Xanax. When the phone rang late at night, anxiety forced bile into my mouth. Had he died?
So those sign-ups, in the face of my father, growing ever thinner, juggling a basket of medications, not to mention my mother, sick with worry … in the face of my family crisis, the very idea of volunteering was ridiculous. Preschool was a place to drop my kids off so I could rest for a few hours.
And you know what? That’s ok.
My father collapsed only a few weeks into the school year, on Labor Day, and died two weeks later. My mind was where it should have been–fully present with my family, not freaked out about who would organize all the things I’d signed up to do at school and now couldn’t.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel guilt. I’m hard-wired for guilt. But I also recognized that it was all I could do to tread water as a parent that year. How do you explain grief to a pair of chubby-cheeked two year olds who see a lack of chocolate pudding as catastrophic? How do you tell them your tears are ok, not to be scared, that Mommy’s just sad and misses her daddy? Explaining my grief to my children was (and still is) like a hot poker to the stomach. The effort knocked the breath out of me. There was no guidebook for it, no “What to expect when you have to explain death to your toddlers.”
It scared them to have Mommy burst into tears without warning in the middle of their bath, or in the middle of Target. They struggled to comprehend the idea of heaven, and where exactly Grandaddy Tom had gone. Even with loving parents trying to explain it, that’s a heavy load for a couple of two year olds.
And this is why, again
So the next year, when they were three, I reached for those sign-up sheets, right?
No.
I still didn’t feel ready. Helping my mother with the practicalities of the estate after my father’s death was just as draining, in a different way, than sitting in his hospital room.
And then, in late October, my husband started having horrible pain. Initially his doctors thought he had a kidney stone, and gave him narcotics and told him to wait it out. He wore jeans and a t-shirt for the Halloween party we hosted. We joked that his costume was Robert Downey, Jr., because he was high on pills and would periodically pass out.
Then we found out a few days later it wasn’t a kidney stone.
It was testicular cancer.
Again, volunteering was the farthest thing from my mind when the doctors told us they had to operate the very next day, and that no, there was no time for a second opinion. Mark’s parents drove up and took the twins back home with them, and he had his surgery. My mother and I sat in the waiting room, both of us in our own private hell. Only 13 months ago, my father had died, and now my husband was having surgery for cancer.
In the end we were lucky. His cancer was stage one, and the more highly treatable of the two types of testicular cancer. He still had to undergo a six week course of radiation, which started the week before Christmas. My husband began to look like an echo of my father during his radiation: drawn, gray, thinner by the minute. His usual appetite for steak and burgers vanished; he’d manage half a bowl of soup for dinner.
My kids’ preschool teachers that year didn’t see much of me at all, and when they did, I was usually crying. I missed one pickup entirely because I took a nap and slept through my alarm. I was the opposite of a volunteer mom. I was a mom just trying to get through the day and present a happy face for her kids when they got home. Yet we were also trying to be open with the kids about what was happening, in an age-appropriate way.
Again, there’s no, “What to expect when you have to explain your husband’s cancer to your three year olds.” At least, none that I found. We did the best we could to be honest with the kids, and they knew Daddy was sick, but at that age, “sick” meant a cough, a runny nose, a tummy ache.
If you find yourself needing to not volunteer, that’s ok. You don’t have to be supermom. If your life is exploding, take a step back and pick up the pieces. You have to be whole before you can help anyone else. People do understand. Really. Sure, if you’re anything like me, you’ll beat yourself up, but others won’t. If they’re like the dear moms at my preschool, they’ll bring you casseroles.
Finally this year, I’ve signed up. For, um, a lot.
As for my story, this year my twins are five and in kindergarten, and now I’m finally volunteering.
I intended to volunteer for something small. Something really small. And somehow I’ve gone a bit bigger than I intended.
Okay, way bigger than I intended.
For starters, I’m a room mom. (I know, right?) We went to our kindergarten open house and there was space on the sheet and I thought, “Well, I’m never going to know what’s going on around here if I just pull up and drop them off every morning and repeat in the afternoon for pick up. I need to be here.”
And then I saw a sign-up sheet for library volunteers. Libraries? Books? Sign. Me. Up. I spent a lovely hour in the library today helping my twins’ kindergarten class check out books. The kids were beyond excited to have Mommy at school, and I was happy to be able to meet their classmates.
All this means I’ve joined the PTA. And I’ve found that I like knowing what’s going on at school. This particular PTA is incredibly active, and just having been to a few events, I’m starting to know some of these superwomen.
And I am in awe.
I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you I occasionally wonder if I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I’d intended to use all this free time to write.
But … I’m finding that I like volunteering. Yesterday I spent 2 1/2 hours at the car dealership having my minivan oiled and de-gunked (why yes, that is a technical term), and I used most of the time to input information into the class website I’m building.
I’m happy to be getting to know people–parents, teachers, and administrators. I’m starting to associate faces with names and I’m there often enough to learn things like where the bathrooms are.
How will I feel in a few months? I don’t know yet. But I’ll be sure to let you know.
As for the room mom stuff, we haven’t gotten to the point where we’re asking parents for time commitments or cash or party supplies yet, but when we do, I am making myself a promise that if I don’t hear from a few parents, I will remember myself a few years ago. You never really know what’s going on inside another household, and I hope my own experiences can help me make a year or two easier for any of the parents around me who may need it.
This post was written for Volunteer Spot, an amazing online resource for parent volunteers in schools. Check out their new site for room moms, Room Mom Spot. They’ve also just launched an iPad app, Clipboard by Volunteer Spot, which turns any iPad into a clipboard sign-up sheet.
You can follow Volunteer Spot on Twitter @volunteerspot
On Facebook, find Volunteer Spot at https://www.facebook.com/volunteerspot . Go visit–this is the last week of a sweepstakes to win an iPad for you AND $500 for your school!
Save time {and stress} and get more parents involved
at school with VolunteerSpot.com!
VolunteerSpot’s FREE online signup sheets make it easy to organize parents and signup to help for just about anything: classroom helpers, snack schedules, carnivals, library volunteers, parent-teacher conferences and more…. No more ‘Reply-All’ email chains! Please share with your room mom, teachers and parent leaders…
Plus there’s a huge Sweepstakes on VolunteerSpot’s Facebook page!
Win an iPad for YOU and a $500 for your fave School! Enter here
