Playing the Mom Game

 
  Life is not a competitive sport, I tell my kids. So we pretend not to keep score at second-grade soccer; we pretend not to keep score at T-ball.
    But every night, after the kids are in bed, I know exactly the score of that day’s Mom game, and whether it was a win, a loss, or a draw. It’ll never make ESPN, and the announcer is only in my head.
    “Her first up today is a good one, a 2-point bonus: she blow-dries her hair instead of doing the school drop-off dripping wet. The kids are out the door on time; they get to school with their lunches, no deductions there. In fact, it looks like she scored 2 points for extra difficulty in lunch preparation; she dusted off the multi-compartment glad-ware, put assorted veggies in one compartment, dill dip in another, and cheddar slices and whole wheat crackers, individually bagged so the crackers wouldn’t get soggy, in the third. Excellent presentation!”
    (Now for an extended intermission while the kids are at school and the mom is at work in her home office.)
    “OK, we have another scoring opportunity; the kids are home from school. This could be a big score, she’s not on a conference call and shushing the kids, she could potentially take 10 minutes to get a snack in front of them and hear the high points of their day. The hopefully empty lunch boxes are tossed on the counter and—Bzzzzzzt! It’s a 5 point penalty; the kids are starving because she mixed up the bags—boy-child got two bags of cheese, girl-child got two bags of crackers, and heaven forbid they should find each other at school and switch.”
    “Now we’re moving into the critical after-work activity-juggling event. She’s got five minutes between the end of the work day and the time she leaves for T-ball. She sends boy-child up to change while  she starts a load of laundry—2 points.”
    “Boy-child comes back downstairs—the T-ball uniform was in the laundry, it is now hopelessly wet and sudsy—minus 10 points.”
    “The mom is only a little late when she drops her son at T-ball wearing a plain blue shirt, just a half-point deduction there. And she’s saving gas because she did the drop en route to girl-child’s flute lesson, plus 5 points. Halfway to the flute lesson she calls spouse to check the T-ball schedule, with a nagging feeling that something is wrong. It is, she dropped boy-child at the wrong field! (Why does Little League have so many different venues?)  Another 10-point deduction. The mom does not wait at the curb to watch daughter walk into the flute teacher’s door; doesn’t even put the car in park—minus 1 point. Every red light raises her anxiety level—what is boy-child doing? Is he freaking out, since he’s at the wrong game? No, boy-child is fine, he’s playing on the play structure. He calmly gets into the car, and tells her that he’ll likely miss the first two innings. The mom tries to appear calm.”
    “Back home after flute pickup and T-ball pickup she spends two minutes on the internet googling her list of leftovers, clueless as to what to make for dinner; she finds out she can combine them all and call it jambalaya—5 points.”
    “The kids eat it—2 more points.”
    “The kids are on track to be in bed by 9 pm—2 points.”
    “The kids turn on the TV; she’s too tired to intervene—that’s a 2-point deduction.”
    “She decides to take a quick bath before putting the kids in their bath. No one is yelling for “mom,” so the quick bath turns into a long soak. Bedtime slips to 9:30—minus 2 points.”
    “Final score for the day—minus 10.5 points; a crushing defeat.”
    But tomorrow is another game.