Emergency Contacts… (or) Who’s got your back?

I’m too much of a slacker mom to be on top of this, but apparently some of my more together mom friends are in the thick of summer camp registrations.

And with registration forms comes…. you know it… the emergency contact information.

You know- that number you hope to heaven nobody EVER has to use- because if they do– it means there’s a problem with your kid and you aren’t around to handle it.

Now the truth of the matter is that I’m rarely more than half an hour away from wherever my son is at any given time. And between us, I figure my husband or I could be at the school, camp, hospital (God forbid!) or wherever we needed to be in pretty short order… but still… the biggest danger in my case is that I’d be out running errands and wouldn’t catch it (I keep mine on silent mode.) 

If it weren’t the number listed on my business cards, I’d be tempted to have as my message: “Thanks for calling, you have reached the bottom of Liz’s purse… I’ll call you back just as soon as I realize that you called.  If you really want to talk to me, call me at home!

I’m thinking about this because of an email exchange between some mom friends on the subject of emergency contacts.  One mom was asking permission to list others in the gang as emergency contacts… and another piped in that she regularly listed various members of the group as contacts without explicit permission.  

Maybe this strikes you as presumptuous- but for me it spoke volumes about the safety net in this group.   The part that nearly brought me to tears was when she added, “you know I’d drop everything and get one of your kids if need be.”  

I count myself very blessed to be part of this particular group of moms, even though I now live almost 1700 miles away (1698 according to GoogleMaps).  

Maybe I’ll share the whole story some other time- but the short version is that there’s been a group of about 6 moms who started hanging out about 10 years ago (that’s hard to believe!) when our oldest were nursing.  

It all started at the La Leche League in Arlington, VA.  There were a handful of us with infants roughly the same age.  And the moms were roughly in the same shape: sleep deprived, former professionals of some sort or another, slightly on the older side, slightly out of the mainstream,  and looking for friends to help us make sense of the strange new world we had entered.   

Over time moms came and went, but by the time the kids were about 2, we had solidified into a group we called the “coffee moms,” “the village people” or just “the mommies.”

At first the mommies talked and drank coffee while the babies sat and nursed, drooled or slept.  

Then the mommies talked and drank coffee while the kids played/ate snacks/took toys from each other.  

Then the mommies talked and drank coffee while the kids ran around and ignored the mommies.  

Then the mommies talked and drank coffee while the kids went off to school. 

They still meet weekly (give or take)  and I keep in touch via email.  

 

We’ve seen each other through good times (new babies, new houses, promotions and awards not to mention the thousands of daily joys and gut busting laughs that we’ve shared) and hard times (hurricanes, scary breast lumps, brain surgery, along with the more pedestrian trials, tribulations and tantrums.)  

So even though I’m too far away to be of much practical assistance in times of need (I can’t really bring dinner or be listed for emergency contacts!),  I’m so grateful to be included in the emails that go out to rally the troops.  

And like my friend, I’d drop anything to lend a hand to these women and their families if need be.  

So, you might be thinking, I have great friends, but what’s the point?  

The point is this:  as much as we might like to, mothering is not something we can do alone.  

A cursory glance into history or anthropology will show that nuclear families as we know them are a blip on the evolutionary chart.  Until VERY recently, children were raised in communities- or at the very least extended families.  

The mobility that so many of us take for granted has had it’s price: how many of our children have the extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins nearby that we had growing up?  

And parenting is the sort of thing that simply cannot be done alone.  The saying, “it takes a village to raise a child,” is a cliche at this point- but like many cliches, there’s some truth to it.  

So my question is:  who’s got your back?  Who do you rely on as part of your village?  

This is tricky for moms these days.  There’s such pressure to do it all ourselves.  And when things are clicking along more or less normally- we can usually manage to pull it off- or at least look like we can!  

Maybe you don’t feel like you have a community, or maybe you’re not sure just how far they would go for you.  

But let me ask you this:  think of all those people you would go out of your way to lend a hand to. 

I bet it’s a pretty long list.  

If even half of those people would do the same for you (and the truth is- there are probably many more people than you can think of that would help), you might have more support than you can see on a daily basis.   

Sometimes we just live our lives without thinking too much about these things.  But you really find your community when the &$^ hits the fan.   

I realized just how big, wide and deep the safety net was that held my family in August 2005 after Katrina hit New Orleans.  We had just moved there in July, and found ourselves functionally homeless.  Except we weren’t.  We had offers of housing and help from around the country. 

And when we decided to head back to VA to regroup, one of these families shared their home with us for months while we figured out our next step.  When we arrived at their house, we were welcomed as returning heroes, not as pitiful refugees by the mommies (and daddies and kids).   They had even packed a backpack with all the necessary supplies for my son’s first day of Kindergarten.  

But it wasn’t just this gang of mommies that came through.  A friend I hadn’t seen since college found out about our situation via another friend and sent a box of clothes his son had recently outgrown- completely out of the blue.   Random strangers brought dinner to our friend’s house.  I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since.  

There are no words for the gratitude I still feel for the support we received during this really hard time.  And no words for the gratitude that I feel for the incredible opportunity to really see how much support was there for us.  

There’s more to be said on that for sure- but here’s the bigger point:

Sometimes you have to be vulnerable to see what support you have right in front of you.  If you look like you have your act together all the time, how will anyone know you need a hand?  

It’s a constant practice for me- but I’m doing my best these days NOT to look like I have it all together.  To figure out what I like doing and do well, and to ask for help with those things that I struggle with.  

The amazing thing is that when I do, it’s like a double bonus.  Someone else gets to help me (hopefully doing something they like to do!) and I don’t feel like crap.   How cool is that?  

Mommy networks are some of the most amazing networks out there.   We save each other’s lives,  sanity, marriages, kids and so much more every day.  

So- Who’s got your back?