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“I need to go check my tooth!” Patch announced as we walked in the door from Kindergarten. He dashed upstairs to his room. I wasn’t really paying attention. I thought he might be running for a mirror to check on the progress of the wiggly tooth in his mouth. But then the crying started. Patch was in his room, with his pillow pulled back to reveal…nothing. “Mom, It’s gone!”
Thoughts cascaded into place. Something was missing from under Patch’s pillow. But he hadn’t lost a tooth recently. How long ago did he lose that first tooth? I remember writing about it being the last first tooth, but when was that exactly? A month ago? Two months ago? Why are we sad about it now? And then with a sinking feeling I realized that though I remember him losing the tooth, I do not remember ever replacing the tooth with money in approved tooth fairy fashion. In fact I remember forgetting the first night and promising to do better. But I must not have. I forgot. And he forgot. Until today, when he remembered to check. We found the tooth where it had slid under the bed.
“I’m sorry buddy. I’m not a very good tooth fairy. But you know what? I think that if you have to wait this long, you should get a whole dollar for that tooth.” The usual rate is a quarter. This pleases Patch.
“Can I keep the tooth?” he asks.
Of course he can keep the tooth. He can keep anything that will help this small rite of passage be a happy experience rather than a disappointing one. The first lost tooth and the magical appearance of money in exchange is one of those special moments of childhood. And I dropped the ball. I forgot.

When I was 13 years old my church youth group put on an Italian dinner as a service project. We were all to come dressed in Italian style clothes and I was assigned to bring the salad. I don’t remember how I occupied that day, but I do remember the last minute rush to get me to where I was supposed to be. I’d scrambled into my costume and arrived, breathless, apologetic for my lateness. My youth group leader simply asked where the salad was. I didn’t have it. I spilled over into more apologies and excuses, but she stopped me. I don’t remember her exact words, but I do remember standing in that kitchen, watching her pull salad fixings from her own fridge, and realizing with a sinking feeling that all the excuses in the world did not change the fact that I had been responsible for bringing the salad and I had not lived up to the responsibility. My leader salvaged the dinner I had nearly ruined, by stepping in to do the work that I should have done.

I know I have been busy these past few months, but all the explanations in the world does not change the fact that I forgot Patch’s tooth. If that were the only forgotten thing I would not feel so bad, but I just wrote a note of apology to Gleek’s piano teacher. I forgot to send Gleek to lessons several weeks in a row and then when I did send her she had not practiced. The result was pretty miserable for both Gleek and the teacher. Gleek will not be taking any more lessons until she wants them again. It may take several years before she wants them. The piano teacher has no idea what I am doing with my time. She does not know what I chose to do instead of requiring my child to practice daily. All the piano teacher knows is that I can not be reliably depended upon to help my child prepare for a weekly lesson. I fear my children’s school teachers have similar assessments of me. I fear their assessments are valid as I stare at a pile of worksheets that I never got around to making the kids do. It is fortunate that the one child for whom the grades really matter, has become very responsible about getting her own work done. I can’t go back and re prioritize. I don’t get a do over. All I can do is throw the worksheets away and plan to do better next year.

Don’t bother with excuses, take responsibility and make apologies. I’ve apologized to Patch about the tooth. I’ve apologized to all of my kids multiple times for all of the small times I was busy or distracted. The apologies soothe hurt feelings and provide closure, but for an apology to be truly effective, part of it must be a commitment not to do the same thing again. And so here I am, looking back and trying to figure out how to do things differently. I chose the projects that made my life so psychotically busy. I don’t regret those choices and the business opportunities that the choices will bring. But I need to also look squarely at the results of the choices so that I can plan for the future. In this case the damages are minimal. Our family has experienced some minor erosion due to extreme busy-ness. It will take a some repair effort to return the structure to its previous sturdy state. I need to make sure that the future holds repair and renewal rather than continued erosion.

In all of this I think the greatest damage was done inside my own head. Ever since that lesson I received as a 13 year old girl, I have been silently determined to be both dependable and reliable. These things are part of how I define myself. When I agree to do a task I want the other person to know that it will get done. This is all fine until I enter the area of implied agreement. When I put my kids into public school, I am giving the school and the teachers power to put tasks onto my To Do list. They assign homework and schedule events, both of which I am expected to support, no matter what else may be on my schedule. I attend a church which relies heavily on volunteers and social activities to run. The church often puts things onto my To Do list without explicit consent from me. Schlock Mercenary depends upon fans and customers who are all free to email and make requests without my prior consent. By participating in the larger organization I am giving implied consent to an endless stream of small To Do items. I can eschew the To Do lists, but not without injuring the social structure upon which these organizations rely. If I stop answering customer support emails, then the customer base will wither. If I stop attending church functions, then I will cease to be tied into that community. If I don’t come to my kid’s school events, I have failed to support that event and that child. And so this spring I had a perfect storm of things I had explicitly agreed to do and things I had implicitly agreed to do. I had 27-30 hours of stuff for each 24 hour day. It was impossible for me to accomplish it all, and so I didn’t. Now I am surrounded by evidence of commitments I failed to fulfill. This makes me feel quite bleak, particularly when the commitments are in high priority categories like “Nurturing the Children.”

I am left with the question “If I am not reliable, then who am I?” It is not a helpful question, but it looms in my head nevertheless. The need to scale back is obvious and already under way. But the emotional rebalancing is taking a bit longer. It took me this long to identify the effect these broken commitments were having on my emotional state. I will be very grateful for a fresh start next school year. In fact the fresh start begins tomorrow as we enter into the summer schedule.

This afternoon I spent 90 minutes just hanging out in the back yard with my kids. Patch and Gleek were in need of distraction, so we wandered around and picked flowers. Then we discovered that rosebud petals make beautiful little boats. We soon had a regatta of rose petal boats crewed by forget-me-not sailors crossing a sea of lawn. The last bleeding-heart flower was given a bachelor button hat and declared to be the queen. Kiki joined us and showered me with white flowers from the snowball bush. It was all very light-hearted which is not something I have been much of late. I could see the kids unwinding, just glad to have me there with them. Patch may always remember that mom forgot his first tooth under his pillow. I hope he will also remember the rose petal regatta, or something like it. It will give him a very real view of his human mother who sometimes fails at her commitments, but picks up again and tries to do better.

Today I identified part of the reason that Link has been fighting so hard against growing up. Every day that takes him into the future is one day closer to the time when his current teacher will not be his teacher anymore. Link does not want to leave fifth grade because he will leave behind something that is precious to him. We’ve talked about it, but I don’t have much comfort to offer. Link and I both know that visiting this teacher is not the same as being in the classroom with him every day. But identifying a source for the grief has actually done a lot to help calm Link down. He is very prone to displacement and often the displaced emotion goes into places where that emotion almost seems logical. It almost makes sense that Link be sad about Bestfriend moving away. To be in tears over it 3 years after the fact seems a little excessive, until you realize that Link is really sad about a parting that is looming in front of him. Then the returned grief at a previous parting begins to make sense.

I need to make more time for Link. He needs more snuggly, quiet spaces where he and I can talk through the thoughts in his head. I need to point out this realization to him so that he can see it too. Perhaps making this connection now will help him in the future to make his own connections.

My kids are real troopers. They have weathered the huge shift of having me change from a focused stay-at-home mom into a frequently scattered work-from-home mom. They have had some emotional reactions, but for the most part they have stayed wonderful kind people who don’t deliberately act out to try to reclaim some of my attention. This has even been true over the last two months when I was so insanely busy that I hardly had time for them at all. They stepped up and took care of themselves and each other. They believed me when I kept telling them it was only temporary and that they could have me back soon. But even the best troopers wear out eventually, and I’ve started seeing all the little signs.

I listen to them and hear the simple acceptance that I am always working. I hear the comment on the way to the park, that “Mom likes to play with us when she doesn’t have to work.” I hear Patch say “I know why you are always late. It’s cause you’re working.” I hear Kiki sigh in relief to her friends “At least the books didn’t arrive before my birthday.” I hear Link asking for extra snuggle time in the evening. I see Gleek’s tears when I was late for her school performance and she was afraid I would not come at all. Even with my fractured attention, the evidence is beginning to accumulate. I am working too much. The kids need more of me than they have been getting. Not only that, but the kids’ teachers need more support from me. I’ve always been one of the reliable, volunteering parents. I’ve been responsible and dependable. I’m not sure any of this year’s teachers would use those words to describe me.

Yesterday I asked my three youngest which field day events they most wanted me to attend. They all answered unanimously that they wanted me to come and be there all day long. They wanted me to hang out and see the events, and take pictures, and give them all my attention. I realized that because I’ve hired help with the shipping preparation I could. I could just leave the house and be there for the kids in the way that they need without neglecting critical business tasks. So I did that today. I got my shipping helper settled, ran a quick errand, and spent the rest of the day with the kids. We still had the problem of one parent trying to watch three kids simultaneously, but I was there.

I need to be there more, in all the little ways that add up so importantly in the math of childhood.

The big business task for the next two weeks is preparations for the shipping party. It will be taking place Monday June 8th and continuing into Tuesday June 9th if we don’t finish on the first day. The last two shipping events were complete in a single day, but I always schedule the spare day just in case. One of the tasks for today is writing up a blog post for Howard’s front page with all the details including times and contact information.

Rounding up volunteers is one piece. Another is the collection of shipping supplies. This is mostly done. The supplies will need to be hauled to Dragon”s Keep, but that is a chore for the morning of the event. Most of what remains is organization of invoices, postage, and inventory. The biggest difference this time is that I have hired help with the organization. It makes a huge difference. For example, I’m sitting here blogging about preparing for shipping rather than sitting glued to my computer printing out postage. Someone else is sitting at the computer processing the lists. I feel strangely guilty about that. It feels as if I am ducking a responsibility somehow. Instead of printing postage, I’ve been handling email, cleaning up my neglected house, and counting inventory to make sure we have all the pieces we need. It feels good, almost relaxed. This is very different from the frantic, stressed hurry that I usually feel. Apparently I was trying to do too much. Go figure.

Kiki was still awake when I got home from CONduit. She was being a good babysitter and watching the house and the sleeping kids. We spent forty minutes in the kitchen with late night snacks while her thoughts about the last two days spilled forth as words. My head was full of thoughts too, but my convention thoughts were unlikely to interest her much, so I listened. The three younger kids had spent the last day over at my backyard neighbor’s house, but Kiki mostly hung out at our house by herself. It was fascinating to listen to her as she processed this preview of what it would be like to live on her own. I can tell that it was a good experience for her. She had to take responsibility for feeding herself and curbing her tendency to watch anime all day. She also detailed her evening babysitting as she welcomed the other kids home and tucked them into bed to wait for my arrival. It all went so smoothly. There were no big upsets. No frantic phone calls from children in need of parental intervention. I was able to completely focus on other things and the kids were well cared for.

There were two large problems with the Scrapyard book launch party. I did not line up help ahead of time, and I forgot a crucial box containing my cashier tools. The first was solved for me when Christie Richotte walked up to me as I was running to set up. She said “Can I help?” and then functioned as extra hands for me over the next several hours. Other people volunteered as well. I’m not sure who hung the banner, but I am grateful that they did so that I could set up the merchandise. Afterward we had an abundance of clean-up help. 40 pizza boxes vanished into the garbage, taken by someone who quietly saw that it needed done and did the job. Merchandise was put back into boxes and two people helped me haul the load to my car. I had more helpers than I had work. It was wonderful. The cashier problem was solved by getting some fives from the front desk and grabbing note pads for credit card transactions. I enter those into our online merchant account later. (*Head smack* I just realized that I could have taken my laptop to the party and just run the transactions on the computer as I created the receipts. Oh well. Next time maybe.)

The first hour of the party was crazy. I had no time to do anything except greet customers and process transactions. The flow of people coming to our table was non-stop. Then they went to stand in line so that Howard could sketch in their books. The room got really crowded. Even more so once the pizza arrived. But there is a satisfaction to filling a room to bursting. It was a good thing. The crowd dwindled in the second half, so that the room became comfortably full instead of insanely packed. We should have some good pictures because Stacy Whitman went around taking some. I certainly did not have time nor energy. Neither did Howard.

Howard and I are constantly conscious of how much we owe to our fans and particularly to the local community. They show up to help us and support us. They come to our panels. They laugh at our jokes. They help ship our books. We wish we could thank the more far flung fans effectively, but at least we can throw a really big party and feed everybody. It doesn’t feel like enough thanks to express the gratitude we feel. The point of a book launch party is to say “Hooray we did it!” In this case that “we” includes all the fans everywhere, even if they could not be physically present.