Your presence is present enough.

Before I begin today’s topic, you need to know something. One morning in the past week, I fed Daughter fruit pie for breakfast. My reasoning went like this:

1. It was the last week of school, during which Daughter’s presence was required at 643 graduation-related events

2. I could either remember to buy bread or I could remember to pick up a gift certificate for her teacher but, sadly, I couldn’t remember both and

3. Apples are fruit. Pie crust is a carbohydrate, I forced broccoli into her last night, and

4. Shut up.

In short, I am forced to admit I am a mother of the cutting-corners variety. Having admitted that, may I please discuss a variety of mother who simply must be lectured? Maybe not by me; maybe they should be lectured by someone who didn’t toy with the idea of adding a scoop of ice cream to breakfast pie (you know, for the calcium). But someone needs to talk to these women.

I am talking about the women who leave their children at after-school classes and/or athletic practices and then take off for parts unknown.

I have spent several years in the après-school trenches, all smelly hallways and broken chairs. I estimate that 20% of any given population of children in a dance class/gymnastics class/aikido class/soccer practice would answer the question Where is your parent? with a shrug or “She’ll be back later”. It would be one thing if these kids were in their teens, or even nearly in their teens, but these kids are sometimes no more than seven or eight years old. In one particular place Daughter takes classes, the bathroom the kids use is at the far end of a public hallway, accessible with very little effort by anyone else in the building. Call me a worrier but I’m not comfortable ending up as the woman interviewed on local news saying mournfully, “We always knew something would happen in there.”

I waffled about writing this for a while because I fear I have a “Let them eat organic croissants” thing going on here. I know there are parents who can only afford to pay for these classes by working full-time. I am aware that running Hiphugger means I am one of those lucky women who is available to her kid when her kids needs her, without having to run it by management. But the other two women I am closest to in those dingy hallways both work full-time and they are there with me, walking other people’s kids to the bathroom. Both of these women arranged to start work at six in the morning so they can be with their kids in the afternoon, which means I admire them without qualification and can never complain to either one about feeling tired.

I’m not suggesting every single mother needs to sit there video-taping each arabesque and scrimmage. I’m not even saying a mother has to be there; there are kids in Daughter’s class who are monitored by older siblings or grandparents. There are groups of kids who are brought by one mother and the responsibility traded-off between weeks. In short, I don’t care who watches out for these kids, but shouldn’t it concern the parents that no one might be?

I’ve asked the teachers and coaches about this practice. They roll their eyes and mumble the names of the most notably absent parents, but unless it’s a private gym with specific rules about parental involvement, they can’t force the parents to attend. The amazing and maddening thing is, when these kids get injured, the parents call the next day screaming about how “You were supposed to be taking care of them! Why weren’t you doing your job?”

Sometimes it isn’t about the parent’s professional workload. Sometimes, I think, in multiple-child families, it’s about the embarrassment of riches in terms of after-school programs here in Los Angeles, and a certain panic about keeping up with the parental Joneses. Do you want to be the parent who chooses to actually sit with one child and not get the other child to Fun with Fractions?

This past week (the same week I fed Daughter breakfast pie, let us not forget), one of the more defiant and exhausting children in one of Daughter’s classes came bouncing into the park. Following behind her was a small woman with a similar nose. I hazarded, “Is Emma your daughter?”

She smiled wearily, “Yes.”

Emma ran around the field, removing field cones and kicking balls into the hedges, something she did at nearly every practice. However, since her mother hadn’t been here for months, this behavior might have been news to her. I waited for her to say something. She watched Emma as one would watch a television show.

I ventured, “You know, they aren’t allowed to do that.”

Her mother watched for another thirty seconds or so and sighed.

“Emmy, baby, this woman says you can’t do that.”

Emma kicked two more balls into the hedge and ran off to interrupt someone else’s game. The mother turned to me.

“It’s sure hard to park around here, isn’t it?”

I restrained the urge to scream “I bet slowing down at the corner and letting your daughter tuck-and-roll out of the car is MUCH more convenient!” Instead, I mooed sympathetically.

Thus encouraged, Emma’s mother told me about her afternoon schedule. It seems she has three kids, and she has them all in after-school programs. She spends nearly every afternoon dropping them off and picking them up, but because of the overlapping nature of the classes, she never actually views any class. She just drives in circles. One of her kids was at camp this week, which meant she had the time to see Emma at practice.

I was just about to start feeling a certain measure of sympathy for her schedule, if nothing else, when she said, “…and now the principal says we really should start family counseling, because he says the kids are acting out at school to get attention, which I don’t get. I mean, look how I spend every afternoon. But the only time the counselor had available was five-thirty on Fridays, and that’s Bethany’s ice-skating lesson. I don’t know where we’re going to find the time…”

I watched Emma, under the guise of getting control of the ball, push a smaller boy into the dirt, and then glance quickly in our direction. I looked over at her mother. She had never taken her eyes off the side of my head as she was talking to me.