Teacher Appreciation Week: Mo' Appreciatin'

Sunday night, after the kids were in bed, I was mentally surveying the week to come. Imagine an old-time riverboat captain, very grizzled, dueling pistol tucked into his belt, studying the river ahead of him for logs, outlying shoals, or maybe one of those little Huck Finn-type rafts. I am like that Captain. So I was scanning the week in my mind, wondering what needed navigating around and what hazards lay hidden, waiting to swamp us.

Do you get cheery like that on Sunday night?

Then I saw it: Great Caesar's Ghost, Teacher Appreciation Week. Helm hard alee! BACKPADDLE!!!

I have held forth in this space before about the phenomenon of the suburban Teacher Appreciation Week and how it offers unparalleled opportunities for moms to outdo each other while adding extra items to your domestic to-do list, every single day, for a week. Sure, I'd gotten about twenty emails from the room mom about this event, but somehow, when I saw Teacher Appreciation Week looming up out of the fog, it gave me a nasty turn.

My first fearful thought was that Monday was Handmade Card Day.  Laura had gone to bed, so I was already planning to lay out the card-making supplies and have her tackle it before getting on the school bus. Then I double checked and breathed a huge sigh of relief: Flower Day.

"I hope she likes daffodils," I thought.

I went out into the dark and cut the only two daffodils I'd managed to protect from Hank's predations.  (You know the adorable way that little children bring you a flower that they've torn from the stem about two inches below the bloom? Let's just say I have lots of bud vases.) I bundled them up with the old wet-paper-towel-in-a-sandwich-baggie trick and called it a night.

There are other goodies for each day of the week, and every morning a different mom is bringing the teacher an iced, nonfat, no-whip chai latte.  I am not one of those moms.  I guess I have given myself a pass this year.

Today was handmade card day, and Laura wrote this note:

She thanks her teacher for being "good-natured and respectful."  I don't know what to make of that.

She also wrote a poem which I will not inflict on you, as asking other people to appreciate your child's poetical offerings is like wanting them to listen to the dream you had last night. Suffice it to say that it included the lines:

In Autumn, leaves fall like colorful tears,
Color strikes the world like a prodigious ray,
The outdoor design is different each day. 

Hmm, if that don't make her feel appreciated, then I don't know what will?  But just in case, I'm sending in a gift card for Ann Taylor.