"Let your Kindergartner get creative!"
The instructions on the flyer for Crazy Sock Day seemed clear: instead of wearing a Halloween costume to school, let your child "get creative" and scratch her dress-up itch with a pair of crazy socks to wear with her usually-stringent uniform!
Thursday night after the girls were asleep, I collected an abundance of materials. Safety pins, package ribbons, scissors, and Esme's standard red knee-high uniform socks. My idea was to have Esme decorate the knee-highs with ribbons and curly cues just as she would like. In the morning when I presented my idea, it was met with pure glee: "I'll be the only kid in the class with sparkly ribbons! These really will be crazy!" We eagerly curled ribbons and pined them in bunches up and down the sides of the red knee-high socks. As she carefully descended from the car and walked into the school building, I watched her point out her ribbon explosions to the teachers supervising drop-off.
Getting creative is not my strong suit as a mother. My mom was the proud owner and frequent user of a sewing machine, and she made every Halloween costume I remember wearing. There was the belly dancer outfit (with a leotard beneath of course), the cat from Cats, the gypsy (which incorporated elements from the Metropolitan Opera costume shop), and a princess and a ballerina thrown in the early years. I made Esme's costume this year for the first time, but there was no sewing involved. She wanted to be a violin, and that required only cardboard and an exact-o knife. It was a huge hit.
As I watched Esme proudly parade her decorated socks into the school, I thought I might have hit it big twice in one Halloween: a violin and a pair of crazy socks! And not a stitch of sewing! I can do this mom thing! Except that when she got back in the car that afternoon I knew it had all gone horribly wrong. The socks no longer looked like a wacky birthday package. Instead, two scraggly ribbons hung alone on the otherwise bare red socks.
"Mommy..." the tears came almost immediately. "The ribbons kept falling off all day long. They just ripped off. And they were lying all around the classroom. Stephanie even picked one up and brought it over to me and I was so... so embarrassed!"
"Oh sweetheart! I'm so sorry."
"I just kept shoving them into my backpack all day and tucking them into my socks but they just kept falling off. And by the end of the day everyone could see that I was just wearing my plain old uniform socks. Oh I'm SO sad!" Esme has a wail that convinces any listener of her deep and inconsolable pain.
I was already driving on a main road, but I reached my hand around to take hers. "Sweetie, I'm just so sorry. I didn't realize they would rip off. That must have been embarrassing for you." Trying to get her thinking about something else: "What did the other kids do with their socks?"
"No one else made their own crazy socks. Everyone else had store-bought socks. Mom, why didn't you just go to Wal-Mart and buy me some socks to wear today? Making them was so dumb!"
In an instant, all the sympathy I had felt for my sweet humiliated kindergartner flushed away and in its place came an awful anger. So that's what this was about. She wanted store bought socks like everyone else. I was at once hurt -- getting creative at home wasn't good enough? -- and disappointed that my daughter would fall to peer pressure so easily. I took her resentment so personally. Perhaps it was because I am insecure in my ability to be a fun mom with the perfect Halloween-themed socks on hand, and I was proud that I had actually ponied up a craft for once, or perhaps it was because I feel vehement about giving my daughters rock solid confidence and this was clear evidence that I have so far failed in that goal. I felt my eyes sting.
We talked about her feelings a lot throughout the rest of the day. I brought up one of her favorite books, David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes in which the little girl turns the colors of the rainbow because she is trying to please everybody and is unable to stay true to what she wants. We talked about how easy it is to go to a store to buy something but how making it makes it unique and creates a memory in the process (a bit hypocritical of me considering my history with making stuff, but perhaps I'm changing!).
But in the midst of trying to build her confidence, I tried not to forget that she was truly humiliated. And that needed to considered too. That needed to be validated. But did the humiliation justify bending to peer pressure and buying her store-bought socks for next year's Crazy Sock Day? Or should I stand my ground and use this as a small but potent lesson that it's okay to be different?
It's just one of the many times motherhood will punch me in the stomach. Or, as Elliot put it, "When you bend on the uniform, everything turns to chaos!"
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