The Cirle of Life or You’re A Soccer Mom

One day you’re a young woman with hope and dreams, plans for the future, and the next thing you know, you’re a soccer-mom.  Your only dreaming happens when you fall asleep for ten quick minutes waiting for drama auditions to finally end.  It’s the kind of dreaming that leaves drool stains on your shoulder and lines in your cheeks.  The strangest thing is you have no idea how this happened to you.

Oh, you remember the highlights – little people in scrubs screaming at you to PUSH; the Dora cake you baked in a bowl, frosted with nine cans of whipped chocolate, and subsequently offended every Spanish-speaking country in the world; the first day of school when your little princess cried so hard she threw-up on the vice-principal’s shiny new shoes – it’s just all those days in-between that confuse you.  It truly does not seem possible that you have three kids, a dog, four goldfish (Sorry, three.  I forgot the one floating at the top of the bowl this morning.), and a SUV (the fashionable equivalent of a mini-van).

You’re a mother of school-aged children and you’re not sure if you like it.  Oh, you love your kids.  There’s no question about that, but weren’t you created for more than selling fifty-cent cheetah print slap bracelets at the Santa sale?

No child was harmed during the shooting of this picture.

I’m sure you thought so.  Once.  Now you can’t think past the Mt. Everest size mountain of laundry growing out of your second floor hall closet.  You’re supposed to re-create the Mayflower from a shoe box and glue gun by Friday and your son’s eighth-grade teacher just called to tell you he failed his algebra test.  You know that the Pilgrims would never have required you to build a boat from cardboard, and although it’s unlikely any Indians will scalp you, your son’s Math teacher looks like she can swing a mean axe.  It doesn’t matter that no-one but Einstein and eighth-grade math teachers use algebra, you’re forced to Google the answers to tonight’s homework.

You have feelings of pity toward your own mother for the gray hairs you caused when you were sixteen.  You remember the maccaroni beach scene that hung over her wall-mounted telephone for so long only six lone macaronies remained by the water’s edge.  They looked tired and a tiny bit sad.  You marvel at the wonder of the slightly sagging, mildly wrinkling woman who is your mother.  She still sends birthday cards and babysits your kids when they are too sick to sit through another junior-league softball game.  She lived through being a soccer mom and she’s better for it.  At least she exhibits a lot more patience with your kids than she did with you.  She has that knowing look in her eyes – the one that says, “You’ll not only live through this, but one day you will realize you loved it.”

via Pinterest

While you’re sitting at your computer becoming best friends with internet math geeks, that mis-matched girl of yours clasps your cheek in her chubby little fingers and plants a spitty kiss on your face.  “I love you mom.”

You begin to understand that you are living your dream – the one you had when you played house in the backyard day after summer day.  It’s the circle of life, or maybe it’s just that darn Lion King song stuck in your head again.   Tonight you love the life of a soccer mom.

Then your cell phone rings from the front pocket of your jacket.  It’s the Math teacher and she’s swinging her ax.  It’s not only the circle of life, it’s the circumference of the circle + a-b squared.  It’s life as a soccer mom and you love it.  At least you love your kids.