The last bake sale

“I’ve never known so many people to be concerned about my mental health as the year my daughter left for college,” a friend confided to me recently. “After a while, I started thinking that I probably should have a nervous breakdown, because it seemed as though people were expecting it.”

I’m losing my job next August, that full-time mom-on-patrol stint that’s been a significant part of my adult life. I’ve moved from not being able to safely leave a room occupied by a conscious child (“Was that crash on Spongebob or in the dining room?”) to facing an autumn when both of them are in college.

Of course, it’s not exactly a “My work here is done” situation, clear to anyone who deals with the enormous emotional swells of older kids. “The bigger they are, they bigger they fuck up,” a straight-talking mom at the Catholic grade school once told me. True that, sister. But it is a year that’s marked with many “lasts” of my mom gig, and I’m beginning to notice.

I have laid down firm household rules about this topic. I’ve watched too many friends drive themselves crazy in this last year not to be aware of the warning signs. My vigilance began before school had officially started. The senior-to-be was nursing a late August cold, and I suggested she stay home on day one: no one really needs to go to school on the first day, anyway, I reasoned. After a mighty nose-blow, she looked up at me pleadingly and said, “But mom, it will be my last first day.

“And that shit ends here,” I declared, realizing that we would be tying ourselves into a group knot if we allowed every single moment to be declared “The last Tuesday, October 3 ever.”

Re: Re: Re: yourself, toots

After we banned talk of “the lasts,” I discovered some secret treasures. After receiving an email message with the subject line: “URGENT: cupcakes needed for dance concert fundraiser,” I dutifully turned the oven to 350 degrees and began to whip up a dessert. But I hummed happily at the thought that I was closing in on my last bake sale ever. The night of the concert, I found the Mommy in Charge and went through the ritual gratitude and inevitable instructions: “Don’t put it in that corner. That’s where we’re putting the items with sprinkles.” I walked away with a lighter load, and not just from the brownie dropoff. I was reaching the end of the time when some Martha Stewart wanna-be could offer me remedial instructions in brownie placement, napkin fluffing, or any of the countless other topics I’ve taken in, lips drawn upward and stomach clenched.

And Mommy Emails! I realized. They were coming to a blessed death, too. Before the next committee meeting on whatever it is I go to committee meetings for, as I scanned the slew of “Re: Re: Re: Re: Tonight’s meeting” messages, I realized I would soon be able to absent myself from the land of Reply All Nitwits, too. Another “plus” went in the “no kids in school” column.

Three leaves and a rock

I thought back to elementary school. Not much to regret there, either. No more summers spent worrying over whether my child would be placed in the class with the functional alcoholic and the baker’s dozen of Mean Girls, or the room with the certified sadist and the pack of stick-wielding, uncontrollable boys. No more notes demanding three fall leaves and a rock, to be delivered with a jar a decoupage by 7:30 the next morning. No more middle-of-the night three-panel posterboard runs for the ruined Science Fair project. No Science Fairs, oh dear Jesus, no more Science Fairs.

I reached an apex of appreciation after hosting a cast party for the fall play. During the day, I had fielded phone calls from earnest parents who wanted a complete run-down of my security plans, with blueprints, if possible. I was sorely tempted to answer: “Just a minute, let me put down my loaded gun and light a cigarette before I think of an answer.” It was one of those nights that was doomed from the start, because by the end of the evening. I’d had to call for parental pick-ups of two drunken girls and their half-empty bottle of spiced rum. As I shut the door behind the last future Hazelden resident, it dawned on me that it had been the sort of night that made a person glad to be nearing retirement age.

Good luck, girls
Put your hand in a bucket of water, pull it out, and see how irreplaceable you are. My place will be taken by women made of sterner stuff than me. Standing right behind me is a long line of fresh-faced mommies, lined up in alphabetical order and ready to “reply all” to every email, whip up sprinkle-laden snacks, and host the best-darn room parties ever. They have shapely figures, clean aprons, and the ability to sniff out spiced rum at sixty paces. Youth, and stupidity, are on their side. Good luck, girls. I wish you all the best at that next bake sale, and let me know if you ever need to borrow my Bundt pan. God knows I won’t be using it.