Laura knows she’s going to run the risk of sounding gratuitously self-deprecating with this post but she’s going to do it anyway: several things lately have prompted her to feel Less-Than and she feels compelled to chronicle and share the events in question and let her Brant readers in on the challenges of her daily life.

A few weeks ago, Laura got an email from one of the uber-parents at Ben’s new school.  Briefly, because Laura feels strange writing too much about Ben — his life is his own, and private, and shouldn’t be used as Brant-fodder, no matter how desperate Laura is for material! — Ben is at a new school now, a Montessori school about 8 miles away that is turning out to be a great place for reasons Laura won’t elaborate on because Ben’s life is his own, and private, and shouldn’t be used as Brant-fodder, no matter how desperate Laura is for material! Anyway, this uber-parent emailed to see if Laura would be willing to co-chair an event a few weeks away — an outdoor fall-related day with crafts and pumpkins and apples and relay races.  It wouldn’t be that bad, the uber-parent assured her in the email — all she would have to do — and all the other co-chair would have to do — would be to figure out all of the activities, assign “volunteers” to run them, and then make sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing.

Laura stared at the email and froze. She’d spent her life as a parent avoiding exactly this kind of thing — outdoor fall-related days with crafts and pumpkins and apples and relay races — because, quite frankly, Laura sucked at all of those things (except for apples) and more than sucking at those things she sucked at organizing and planning things.  Laura could barely organize and plan a morning of paperwork and errands, let alone outdoor activities for a school full of kids and parents she didn’t yet know who would forgive her her ineptitude.

Laura, always desperate for people to like her, or, at least, to not hate her, agreed instantly.  More than wanting to be liked, though, what she wanted was to make it clear, to herself and to Ben and to the parent organization at the new school, that she was willing to be involved, and engaged, and helpful.  She’d spent the last few years at Ben’s previous school volunteering for nothing (it was a tough few years) (in addition to her tendency to not get involved being in full bloom) and she felt guilty about it.  Not for the reason she thought she did — for making other people do the work and never helping with it and for being ungenerous with the little free time she had — but because there was something isolating and slightly sad about having failed to become a part of the school community.  And because of that she was determined to start fresh and do things differently.

So she shot back an enthusiastic but secretly-terrified email quickly — “Count me in!” — and instantly panicked, even though she was up-front and honest in the email about her lack of experience in the parent-volunteering department.  I have no leadership skills and know nothing about crafts! she was sure to inform them all, to slightly paraphrase, but I hope my willingness to be told what to do and be bossed around will overshadow my lack of ability!  Ha ha ha.  And then she sat by the computer hoping for a response that would let her off the hook.  The Well, actually, so-and-so’s-mom is a real crackerjack and co-chaired last year and I’m sure she’d be willing to run the show one more year kind of email.  But unfortunately it didn’t come.  All that came was a cheerful and grateful email thanking Laura for her quick response and her willingness to jump in and roll up her sleeves.

(OK, so she made up the part about the rolling up of the sleeves but you get the idea.)

And so, Laura showed up to the two coffee meetings at the Starbucks a few miles to the school — showed up with her legal pad and her Sharpies and her class list and her folder — showed up with a suppressed feeling of dread and fear that she was not up to the task — feeling like a complete fraud but determined not to give in to her knee-jerk desire to disappear.  Laura had never been a lot of things but one of the things she’d never been the most was a joiner.  And suddenly there she was, “joining” a group of very nice and very smart and very capable women in order to plan a “simple” day of fun of games.

With anxiety-induced flop-sweat (or maybe it was just her age-appropriate hot flashes) she did what she used to do in marketing meetings  at her old job in New York book publishing — take copious notes instead of saying anything because she never really had anything to say.  Over a decade out of the corporate world, Laura was up to her old tricks — nodding and writing and repeating things that had just been said and trying her best to fit in — but it was hard.  Laura had come unprepared — she hadn’t come with crafts in mind for one or two of the tables — and so she readily agreed to suggestions provided by the others:  a table where kids would decorate card-stock paper with leaves and other detritus collected from the natural surroundings (known in the kid’s crafts industry as “Leaf Plaques”), and face-painting (known as “Face-Painting”). In addition, she agreed to help her co-chair — an incredibly organized and dedicated and creative mom — with various duties that included emailing, volunteer-pimping, buying crafts supplies, and transporting 125 pumpkins from a nearby farm to the school in one of her Volvos.

As is so often the case with Laura’s difficult and trying life-moments, things got worse before they got better. Because the time eventually came when she had to go to a crafts store and buy her supplies. But before she could buy supplies, she had to research what she needed. And that took Laura almost 6 hours — searching the web, visiting Martha Stewart’s website, looking for great Halloween crafts that might be better than the Leaf Plaque craft she’d agreed to — before she finally gave up and decided to just go and buy some stupid fucking paper for the plaques and some face paint already. So off she went to the local Michael’s crafts store — and to CVS — AND to AC Moore — all of which were piled high with Halloween, if you’ll pardon the word, crap — and all of which presented Laura with her toughest scenario: deciding on what to buy when confronted with a dizzying array of choices. Nowhere is this problem more obvious than when she goes to Staples on a simple errand — to buy, say, file cards. She’ll get to the file card aisle, then stare wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the endless row of file cards — big ones, small ones, white ones, colored ones, lined ones, unlined ones, day-glo colored ones, pastel colored ones – the possibilities go on and on and on and on — for so long, in fact, that Laura often leaves without buying anything: no file cards, no legal pads, printer paper, no notebooks, no Sharpies.

Which is what happened when she got to Michael’s — not knowing what kind of “plaque” paper to buy, or how much, or what color, or what size, she ended up buying close to $40 worth of card stock — plain white, a variety of parchment colors, bright colors, pastel colors; 8×10, 3×5, 5×7 — and buying about $35 worth of face paint kits at CVS — tubes, brushes, palettes, face crayons — all of which went into the back of her car until The Big Day. The Big Day that finally came last Sunday and that went off, despite Laura’s indecision and overbuying and ineptitude and anxiety and insecurity — without a hitch. People came, they wandered, they stared, their children sat down and glued leaves onto variously colored and variously sized pieces of card stock; they sat down and had their faces painted by a few artistically-abled parents; they decorated pumpkins and they tasted and went on hayrides. And as Laura tried to keep the card stock and the leaves and the glue cups from blowing away in the blusterly wind on that Sunday October morning, she realized that she’d learned one thing that she hadn’t expected to learn:

She liked being involved.

So what if it meant she’d have to spend the rest of the week running around returning all the extra paper and face paint?