A Failure of Epic Proportions....

Should I be concerned that she followed this big hairy man around all night? Totally in love she was.

Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. I tend to do that. But I certainly felt like a total failure last Thursday night.

It was the night of Madeline's first cheering performance. Madeline's first performance of anything, really. Needless to say, that brought out my controlling, type-A, everything must be perfect, borderline psychotic mothering tendencies in full effect. Generally, I'm a very laid back mom. If it won't kill them, maim them, or ruin their perfect hair, I'm usually ok with it. Not much gets me too riled up. But when it comes to their involvement in school related or extracurricular activities, I become a flipping Nazi. Everything has to be perfect. If we really want to read into it, I'm sure it is due to the fact that my parents were not involved in my life like that at all. I never had the opportunities to participate in extracurricular fun unless it required nothing from them. Except a check, my dad was very good at paying for stuff, not very good at being involved. I recall only two instances in which my parents ever attended one of my school functions. One being the city spelling bee in 5th grade, the other my high school graduation. I'm really not in a place right now to get into why, catch me on a drunken night and I'll give you the whole story. The short of it is, that I totally overcompensate for my kids.

I spent all day Thursday making sure everything would be perfect for her performance. Batteries in the camera? Check. Extra pair of batteries, just in case? Check. Camcorder charged up and ready to go? Check. The perfect hair bow? Check. New outfit that looks very cheerleaderish? Check. Matching outfit for Sissy to show her support? Check. I had everything planned out so the night would go off without a hitch. I suppose that was my first mistake.

My dad and stepmom even decided to come up and watch. Shocked the you know what out of me, but right on. Even more perfect the night would become. The game wasn't until 8, we didn't need to leave until 7:45, but we started getting ready at five. You know, so I could make everything perfect.

They looked perfect.

Every curl was in place, every bow tied tightly, new clothes washed, and attitudes excited. Looking like a good night. John actually got himself out of the office and home on time, and Grandma and Grandpa were even a bit early (this NEVER happens). We're still looking perfect.

Then the disasters begin striking.

We leave, John, the girls and I in my car, Gma and Gpa in theirs. We drive the ten minutes to GPHS, where the cheer camp was. The place was dead, as you would expect at 8 pm on a Thursday night, but not when there was supposed to be a football game. We drive around to the back of the school...no stadium. No game, no football players, no fans, no cheerleaders. WTF. I pull out the flyer. Date and time right. No mention of the stadium being at a different location. WTF. I start biting my lip, holding back the tears. There is NO WAY I just screwed this up for Madeline. If she doesn't get to cheer tonight, I will never forgive myself. I'm starting to run the scenario through my head, trying to figure out what is going on. I remember, when I googled the school to get directions the day before the actual camp, seeing on it's wiki page that it was an expansion high school because Snohomish High School was full..... "That's it!" I screamed. "The stadium has got to be in Snohomish!" John and my parents look at me like I'm crazy. I flag down a car carrying a random student and their random parent, and they confirmed my suspicion..the stadium where both high schools held their games was located at Snohomish High School, Longview style, five miles away. "If we go now, we can make it!" I yelled as I jumped back in the car and peeled out of the parking lot.

Luckily, my GPS knew where Snohomish HS was and led us there. However, it led us to a parking lot behind the stadium filled with trailers and construction equipment. I saw some gates, though, and figured the parking lot had been moved to the other side due to construction. I hopped out of the car, grabbed Maddie, and told John to go park and we would meet him inside. Maddie and I took off, sprinting across a muddy gravel lot in the rain, determined to get her to the show on time. During that sprint, I discovered that the pants I bought Maddie were a little bigger than I thought...as she ran, they would slip down her waist and she would step on the bottoms, soaking the poor girl halfway up her calves. We stopped to readjust once, then continued on. We finally reached the gates....and they were locked. Huge padlock and chain locked. I actually, for a second, considered scaling the damn fence, but then realized that it was at least eight feet tall, I was with a four year old, I cannot even remotely be considered "limber" or "athletic", and breaking and entering is not a skill I would like to teach said four year old. I caught the attention of a student lingering inside the fence and asked her how in the hell we could get in.

"You have to go back out to the main street, and go around the block. See the parking lot on the other side of the field? The entrance is over there."

The parking lot. Where I had sent John. With the car. About a mile away. Because I wanted to save time. F*%k me. I find the game clock, and see that we had three minutes of football time left before the end of the quarter. She was supposed to meet up with the cheerleaders with five minutes left in the first, but I figured as long as we made it there before they went on, she could cheer. I looked down at Maddie, curls still bouncy, rosy cheeks from running in the night air, confused, but still so excited to make her cheerleading debut. "Ok, babe, we're going to have to run for it. You down?" I asked her. "Yeah, Mom, let's go!" she exclaimed.

I hiked her pants up and we took off again. Mind you, a runner I am not. I halfheartedly jog a couple of times a week, not for fun (how could you consider that fun?), but to keep my ass from creating it's own atmosphere. Luckily, I had the thought of scarring my child for life to keep me going, and run we did. Splashing through puddles, stopping only momentarily to pull up Maddie's pants or for me to take a breath or two before continuing on. Finally, we make it to the gate. I threw some cash at the ticket lady and we bolted in. Fortunately for us, the cheerleaders were on the side of the field we entered on, so I delivered Maddie to them with 30 seconds left on the game clock. That's about two minutes in high school football time, but still. A bit too close for comfort.

As she was finding her place in line, I went to turn on the camcorder that had been around my chest beating me as we ran. Would not turn on. Are you f*%king kidding me? The battery, which my husband had charged and tested, was dead. Probably because the damn thing is as old as me and doesn't hold a charge anymore and my husband is too freaking cheap to go buy a new one, but whatever. Ok, I can deal with this. I pull out my camera and start taking still shots. About six pictures in, the thing dies. I had been expecting this, though...the flash sucks batteries like nothing I've ever seen before. I pull out my spares, pop them in...nothing. Absolutely nothing. I tried every combination I could with the four batteries I had in my hand, and got maybe four more pictures. As this is going on, the performance has begun. Maddie's in the front row, so excited, and happy, and loving it. I finally give up, pull out my trusty cell phone, and get about a minute of video through that. Grainy and shitty quality, but it's something. Before you know it, her time is over.

After thanking the cheerleaders for their time and suggesting to the coach that she clearly list the location on the next flyer, we go to meet up with Daddy and sissy and Gma & Gpa. They all begin congratulating Madeline and asking how it went. I pull John aside and quietly berate him for the camcorder incident, then walk away and catch my breath.

In the car, waiting to leave the stadium, I laid my head down on the steering wheel and began sobbing. "What on earth is wrong?" John asked, concerned that I may be finally losing my shit. As in, psychiatric ward commitment time. "I'm....a....failure!" I bawled. "I'm a terrible mother, and twenty years from now, Maddie's going to be telling her shrink how awful I am!" John just stared at me for a minute, choosing his words wisely. He knows how psycho I am, and was trying to keep the fallout of my nuclear meltdown to a minimum. "Why do you think you are a failure?" he asked. "Because! She almost missed her cheering because I didn't know where it was, I made her run around a muddy stadium, I have no good pictures or video, and...and...her pants were too big! And it wasn't perfect!" I'd bet the farm John wanted to start laughing, but fearing for his life, he did not. As usual, he was right, made perfect sense, and calmed me down instantly. This is why I love this man. "YOU are not a bad mom. You are one of the best moms ever. Do you know how many parents would have given up after finding there was no game at the first school? Let alone the parents who didn't care enough to even sign their kids up? She got to cheer. No matter what led up to it, and what pictures we have of it, her memories are still the same. She will remember every second of being up there. And you know what else she'll remember? That her mom cared enough to get her the perfect bow, get her ready and dolled up, that she cared enough to run her around the stadium to get her there on time. For her, it was perfect."

I stopped. Damn it. He was right again. When she looks back on her childhood, she won't remember that Thursday night wasn't perfect. She won't remember that all I got was a crappy cell phone video, she won't remember that her pants were a little too long and soaking wet. She will remember how much fun she had, how cool her hair was, and how her crazy mom made her run around a city block but got her to the show on time. She'll remember that I cared. Cared enough to go psycho, yes, but cared nonetheless. I couldn't ask for anything more.