he totally remembered

You know all the little things you do as a mother and never get any thanks for? I mean, it's not like you need thanks very often. You don't usually care. If you start to care too much then you have to think of all the things your own mother did unappreciated, and it's just very overwhelming.  It's better to just keep doing things for your own kid - and sort of bask in the whole circle-of-life of it all. But every now and then - you get thanked. And it's better than the Tyson commercials when the kids stand on the chairs and deliver a monologue on all that is good and wonderful about their mother while the neighbor kid or the grandfather or the brother play inspirational music in the background.

I forgot Drew's snack the other day. It was his turn. And I knew I would forget it, being only the second day back from Christmas vacation, before I even had my new calendar on the wall, and way before I was back into the swing of things as far as notes home and library days and snack turns go.  But knowing I would forget did nothing in helping me actually remember. So sometime in the late morning I realized I had forgotten. I didn't even know when he had snack—morning or afternoon—but I determined to take something to the school anyway, something they could use another day when some other mother forgot. I met his teacher in the hallway and handed her the granola bars. I hadn't missed it. And I don't know where Drew was at the time, but I didn't see him. I pictured him though. I pictured that moment when he realized he had forgotten snack and felt bad about it, or, more likely, the moment when the teacher would announce that Drew had brought snack today, and he would know that I had come through for him when he hadn't even realized he'd needed me to. But I didn't expect him to remember the moment and thank me for it.

You can imagine my thrill, then, when I picked him up from school. The teachers recognize my car and send the boys out when they see me. Drew was swinging the leftover box of granola bars and talking a mile a minute to John as they came to the car. As soon as he opened the door, this:

"You rock, Mom."