The kids have decided they no longer want me around. I'm embarrassing, I guess. I don't really blame them, I'd be sick of me after all these years, too. It started last year when they wanted me to stop meeting them at the bust stop when they come home. I obliged, because it is just at the end of the street, Ri isn't going to let Ro do anything stupid walking from the corner to our house, and I can watch them from the window when I hear the bus come.
Next came their assertion that I not hang out with them in the morning when I'm at school to volunteer on Tuesday mornings. That one stung a little - especially from Ro. But the improvement he has had from first grade, when he needed me in class with him every day, to little mister BIG man on campus - playing Champion Ball with the fifth graders, made it completely worth the little grief I was feeling for his lost tininess. Ri is a little more brutal about the whole thing, sometimes she is happy to have me around and the next second she sees her friends and tells me, "Leave now, my friends are here!"
It can really suck having this as my "job". I often feel like the unwanted after thought, and yet I know that is part of the deal. They get to grow up happy, well adjusted, amazing human beings - thanks in large part to all of my help - and if I do my job well they will just reach a state of complete awesomeness by the time I have to let them go.
Don't get me wrong, I'm partially excited for that day to come. When I'm an empty nester, my husband and I will take exotic trips - without the kids. It will kind of rule! I won't have to live in the suburbs any longer. I can consider exactly what I want to do - for me - just because I want to, and it won't feel like a rare cheating moment.
For now, though, I'm acting the part of the dutiful mother - volunteering, sacrificing and giving them my all. Yet it really doesn't feel like much of a sacrifice. It feels an awful lot like awesome good fun, even if they can sometimes be a little mean.
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