If only reality wouldn’t get in the way

This year, I vow to sign all permission slips, medical forms and PTA sign-ups as soon as they come home from school.

I will not mindlessly toss such papers on the dining-room table where they will collect in a foreboding heap until (a) the teacher phones and says, “Your son can’t get in the dinosaur museum unless you bring a permission slip in the next eight minutes,” or (b) we have people over for dinner.

This year, I vow to read the fine print on those aforementioned PTA sign-up sheets, so that I sign up for only those activities that (a) make me feel warm and fuzzy, (b) require more than one (me) volunteer and (c) do not come with a one-page job description.

This year, I vow to devise a system for saving those pieces of my children’s school work that are worth saving and to immediately throw away the rest. I further vow to sort through the boxes of papers in the basement that date back to my first child’s preschool, circa 1990, keeping only the most significant pieces. After all, like my friend Megan says, “Do I really need page after page of my kids writing the letter ‘L’ in cursive?”

This year, I hold out hope that I will, once and for all, maintain a bottomless cache of cash in the little pottery cup in the kitchen cupboard, so that when my kids suddenly remember to ask for milk money or museum fees as they are running out the door, there will be money to give. And give. And give.

This year, lunches will be magically healthy and yummy and packed before 8 a.m. Bedtimes will be on time. Mornings will be organized so that nobody is running out the door with cereal in a coffee cup, screaming behind them, “I didn’t brush my teeth!”

This year, I vow to keep track of my eldest child’s schedule.

Here is a senior in high school, a solid student considered to be one of the leaders of his school, who didn’t realize he signed up to be sports editor of the school newspaper during the same class period he also signed up to take a French class at the local university.

This year, I will organize myself so that I can help organize him, so that he will know to schedule only one class per hour by the time he gets to c-c-college – which brings up a separate set of vows.

This year, I will not nag my son about college application deadlines every time I see him.

I will not keep reminding him there is a university right across the street he can attend for free since his father teaches there.

I will not freak out with the knowledge that my son will soon be leaving home and I still apparently haven’t taught him to brush his hair before he goes out the door in the morning.

This year, as a new school year gets under way, I vow to remain steady for all my children. This includes my daughter, who has a tendency to get overwhelmed with new things, which this year will number in the thousands since she is 14 and starting high school. This year, I vow to know when she needs me and when she wishes I lived in a different time zone.

I will know when to bound up the stairs to her room, where I will sit on the side of her bed and ask, “What’s wrong, honey?” in the sweetest voice known to humankind, even if it is 11 at night and my eyeballs are moving to the back of my head with my own fatigue and overwhelmedness.

This year, I vow not only to be a calm, steady and all-knowing mother, but the calmest, steadiest, most all-knowing among all.

Instead of my daughter coming to me and telling me how Abby’s mother never complains about driving back and forth to the high school every other half-hour after school and on weekends, I will be the mom who gets put on the pedestal.

My daughter will tell me how all her friends tell all their mothers how Mrs. Hook always smiles, always has the best snacks and is never stressed, at which point, I will look at her and say, “Tell them I’m sorry, but I don’t know that Mrs. Hook.”