A Night Off

Tonight's regularly scheduled Stake YW Presidency meeting was canceled. I suppose I shouldn't be as happy about it as I am, but well...It's been a few weeknights since I've been home. The laundry is in the dryer, the dishes are in the washer, today's storms have abated enough for me to turn on my laptop; and the kids are obsessed with Super Paper Mario on the Wii. (Yes, I made them do homework and chores first! Remember, I'm one of those 'mother of the year' types.) And so, I find myself with some unexpected time to blog and so much to say that I'm not sure where to start.

I've mentioned here many times that I spent my teen years very involved with a youth organization called Rainbow Girls. Until recently, it has been my opinion that outside of the lifelong friends I made and a cute boy or two that I met; I gained very little from that experience. I've also felt like my LDS mission to Italy was also a failure as the only people I knew who got baptized didn't do it until long after I had returned to the stated.However, in retrospect, I have to admit that I was wrong about that. Just about everything I needed to know for the last three years of my life, I learned from Rainbow and from my mission.

When you turn 20, you "graduate" from Rainbow. You can do the ceremony locally like Chris, Lanie, and Wendy did the night before I left for the MTC or you can do it as part of the annual ceremony held at the state convention which was what I did. The ceremony was rather tearful and I remember very little about it except the words 'what you began as a service, you are ending as love.' (Probably got that wrong, it's been awhile. Though I have been known to point at my kids and say "My life is monumented there." Yes, they think I'm VERY strange-and so do those of you who didn't get that reference. But that's nothing new.) Either way, it was a fitting end to five years of my life that was spent memorizing parts, conducting meetings, working concessions at OU football games, making polite conversation with people I didn't have much in common with (old Masons and Eastern Star ladies) and going to dances and meeting cute boys. At least one, anyway. It is also a fitting explanation to how it feels to serve a mission. And I don't think it was by chance that I experienced both of these in the earlier years of my life. As I mentioned briefly in a Twitter entry yesterday, we elected a new PTA Executive board last night. For the first time in three years, it does not involve me as President, VP, or Co-President. It was an emotional day, and one that turned out much better than I expected when I mentioned in last week.

Four years ago, I enrolled my son in the local elementary Pre-K program because he had been "released" from any pre-school in town that didn't have a waiting list. I had some trepidation about this school. Many parents I attended church with moved out of that district as soon as their kids hit school age to avoid going there. Natalie had been in private school for four years for that same reason. But Tristan? Well, he's always marched to the beat of his own drum and that school as well as another one weren't in possession of that sheet music. So, to the public school we went. Once his enrollment was secured (Pre-K isn't mandatory, but it fills up fast), I was tapped by two good friends from church to fill in the vacated Treasurer position. The school's PTA program wasn't the biggest, but there was a core group of parents who kept things going. I enjoyed being a part of it, especially volunteering at the school store because I got to meet the kids and to keep my younger kids with me. (At that point, three out of the four because Tristan only went from 8-10:30 a.m.) I liked the school so much that I agreed to serve as secretary the following year and to take Natalie out of private school and enroll her too.

Suddenly, our "core" of PTA moms dwindled to about three and it was determined that I would be a Co-President. I had no leadership experience (or thought I didn't) and I've always had limited organizational skills. Fortunately, the other Co-President had plenty of both and patiently guided me through the year. Still, I didn't feel like I had learned much and our luck at re-building that "core" group didn't hold. In fact, we had more people move or have children move on to middle school. Our treasurer agreed to do one more year even though she no longer had kids at the school, just because she is great. I again volunteered to be Treasurer and drove away on the last day of school relieved that whatever next year held, it wouldn't involve me having so much responsibility. It scared me too much.

Unfortunately, I was in for a little surprise at enrollment night. Last year's Co-President had not only split with her husband over the summer, she had moved away. With the exception of the Treasurer who had already gone above and beyond by agreeing to help out even though she no longer had kids at the school, there was no one left but me who still had even the smallest clue how to go about running a PTA. I didn't want to do it again, I didn't think I could do it again-I was in the final year of my Master's degree program, I was gearing up for a 6-month Internship, I had FOUR KIDS; but as I pondered it, I thought about all those kids I had met through the window of the school store or at Skateland school nights-our PTA pays for more student programs than many of the ones at other schools in town, and I'm almost positive we do it on the smallest budget. I could NOT let these kids go without what the PTA could give them (field trips, artist-in-residence, popcorn and pizza incentive parties, and the once a week school store where they can buy snacks for a quarter). I spotted a mom who had been the Boxtop chair the year before, she was very pregnant, but she was THERE. I recruited her as a Co-President immediately and called another mom and sweet-talked her into serving as Secretary. Between my own inexperience, my Co-President's maternity leave, and few other factors; we struggled all year long. In the end, we made it through only to have the Co-President move (military), the Secretary move, and the Treasurer tell me apologetically that her kids were now well into Middle school and she needed to move on with them. (Still love her, by the way because she HAD already gone above and beyond.) And so, I was almost back to square one...almost.

By stocking the school store on Thursday afternoons, I had befriended another mom in the parking lot who watched me unload for a couple of weeks before offering to help. I concluded that made her good Vice President material. Another mom had helped me keep records during the candy sale-yet again, I was giving up my much coveted Secretary job. Yet another two mothers had stepped up to chair Teacher Appreciation Week and said they would help in any way that didn't involve an executive board position. I made a note to delegate more to them this year (I did and they made me look better than I deserved). Finally, a fellow mom of four volunteered her husband as Treasurer and I was thrilled to have a Dad on board.

While last year's piece-meal team of officers barely got things off the ground at any point during the school year, this year's team hit the ground running! Our new secretary knew pretty much everyone at the school and, unlike shy, hates-to-ask-for-help me, she drummed up several good parent volunteers. She was a true secretary keeping us all connected and on-task with her emails. We started out by taking what was going to be a small movie night and turning it into a very lucrative raffle. One of our most creative moms got together with her family and remodeled the faculty lounge beautifully on a budget that would have made Trading Spaces or Design on a Dime weep with envy. We were also able to purchase new computers for the school, pay for some nice landscaping, and do a lot more than just cover the field trips. I've never been more proud to be part of something than I was this year at school. How amazing it was to have a whole team to help with all the things that used to fall to Dave and I. Did you know being President is more like being the quarterback who sets up the plays than the one person who takes care of everything? I didn't until now. And in the end, despite differences in opinion and other bumps in the road, I learned to love that team I served with-and I hope I showed it to them. And above all, I love those kids that I've served all these years. It's always been about them, and I feel confident with the new officers succeeding me; that it always will be.

And as I've reflected on these things in the last 24 hours, so much of my life as a whole makes sense to me. While I was never comfortable BEING the boss, I was always able to run an executive board meeting efficiently. Perhaps because I was twice a Worthy Advisor (President) in Rainbow? Asking for donations wasn't my favorite, but I could do it more easily thanks to the eighteen months I spent going door-to-door in Italy. Making conversation is also not my strong suit, but serving at all of those Masonic/Eastern Star fundraiser dinners sure was good practice for that. And the school store? How many years in Rainbow did I spent capping Cokes at Owen Field? (Still what I call Gaylord Memorial Stadium, just 'cause I can.) Can't say I went to any dances (though I've danced plenty to the radio down in the school store) and as a married gal, I'm certainly not going to notice whether or not the boys I work with are cute; (I was going to say I didn't meet any cute boys, but we do have the principal and a few dad volunteers whose feelings I don't want to hurt-so I'll just say instead that I'm no longer allowed to look.) But I can see the rhyme and reason of why so many things in my life have worked in the ways that they did. And again, something I once began in service is now ending in love. I never thought I would look back on my time in Italy as "the time of my life," but it was. And I never thought I would say this about my time as PTA President, but in the end it really has been a great four years.