The Ultimate Mom Sacrifice

Well, not really. But chaperoning a school field trip is not for the faint of heart.

Rooting for the Coney Island Cyclones

Signing up to chaperone a school field trip during the last weeks of school isn’t a decision that comes easily. But your child insists and, in a moment of weakness, you cave. And when your child personally tells their teacher that you are going, and their teacher announces it to the other parents, there is no backtracking.

Not that you would. Even though you’ve already put in your time in previous years helping to wrangle kids through crowded museums, petting zoos, and performance spaces. No, you show up, once again hoping for the best. Suppressing the memories of long, bumpy school bus rides filled with children talking and singing and screaming and laughing—at the same time. Forgetting the stress of watching a bunch of kids in crowded spaces.

I am that mom. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a reluctant hand raiser. When anything needs to get done at my daughter’s elementary school, I turn into that kid in the back of the classroom hoping, praying not to be called on. But my fifth grader is graduating this year and I’m feeling nostalgic. I also have a seventh grader and know full well that middle school doesn’t have as many opportunities to see our kids in their element, interacting with their peers. Nor do older kids want us there. (Sorry!)

That’s how I ended up in the blazing heat in Coney Island during “Education Day” last week, when kids from seemingly dozens of New York City schools descended on the legendary Brooklyn amusement park to watch a minor league baseball game (go Cyclones!). And if you've ever been to, say, Disney in peak summer, you know that kids in a crowd are basically identical from behind. Which makes losing one terrifyingly easy. In fact, there were a few times I had to reroute children who kept following other groups. (Queue the facepalm emoji.)

All the while, I had my eye on the time. Can you blame me? As the end of school approaches in the Northeast (kids in parts of the South have been out since mid-May), I am barely keeping up with the celebrations, ceremonies, shows, plays, projects, and coffee chats. This time of the year always catches me by surprise even though I know the drill.

So, the field trip felt like one more thing on top of a lot of things. And though I enjoyed playing rock paper scissors, debating whether ketchup or mayo would win in a condiment war, and eavesdropping on my fifth grader’s conversations with her besties, I was more than ready to go when the teacher announced we were leaving. Phew! Almost there, I thought.

But then a fellow chaperone and dad slipped away and returned with a box of ice pops for the entire class. “Not all heroes wear capes, huh?” I said to him as kids clamored around him choosing between cherry, strawberry, or blueberry. It was a moment of pure kid joy. The kind that scrubs away any ill feelings about field trips.

When I asked this dad, who happens to hold the record for most field trips chaperoned, why he keeps showing up, he told me that his mom never missed a thing. And he never forgot. That’s the power of moms: The love they pour into us shapes how we show up for our own kids.

Somehow that was the nudge I needed to get back on the bus and join the Katseye singalong. With a smile on my face.

Mom Thread | Movie Edition

• Ask E. Jean feels like required viewing for all women. It traces E. Jean Carroll’s career as groundbreaking journalist, author, and esteemed advice columnist. And delves into how she became the only woman to beat Donald Trump twice in court. “The film is a portrait of an indomitable woman who proved it’s never too late to reclaim your voice, rewrite your story, and change the world.”

• I recently discovered this documentary and the description breaks my heart. All the Empty Rooms documents the empty bedrooms of children lost to school shootings. A collaboration between News correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp, the film explores the lives of forgotten families dealing with grief and loss.

• Liz Sargent’s debut drama, Take Me Home, is a labor of love and it shows. The movie stars her sister Anna Sargent as Anna, a 38-year-old Korean adoptee caring for her aging parents while trying to imagine a future of her own. The film explores caregiving, disability, and aging. The through line? Everyone will need care or will provide care at some point in their lives.

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