When Little People and Big Meetings Meet

      In discussing a writers’ conference, I had a few questions: “How do mothers with little children juggle a weekend like this?” I asked. “Are there nursery facilities?”

      A fellow writer-mother had been to this venue before and told me there are no nurseries. She included this line in her response: “If your little ones do well at sitting through church for long periods of time, they should be just fine. Ha.”

     Immediately, my mind went to REACH 2015, a Mission’s Conference we took our young children to. The following words were written to debrief myself afterwards.

     I knew it was going to be a long day of sitting for a five- and two-year-old.  It was a long day of sitting for an adult, but adults can get caught up in the inspiration of the moment and forget they are sitting.  

     A child does not.  Inspiration is not on his menu for the day.  Survival is.  

     I thought I went prepared.  In general, our children sit quietly through church services without much extra-curricular entertainment, but considering this was a full day of meetings in a less-formal setting than church, I tucked snacks, books, tablets, and coloring things into my bulging bag and thought we had the day aced.  We did great through the first three sessions without even touching the snacks. I was impressed.  

     And then came lunch.  

     When the moderator announced that there was only seating for 350 of the 900 people at a time, John leaned over and asked if McDonald's was in order.  

     "Nah," I said, imagining easy-to-eat sandwiches. Plus, fast food restaurants seemed scarce in the area we were in, and the children were still doing so well. I was confident and reassuring. "We’ll be fine.” 

     Wrong.

     Things deteriorated the minute we reached the food tables. There were little cups of stew, a salad, dinner rolls, and fruit in more little cups, all to be balanced on a Styrofoam tray. We were each getting food for ourselves and a child. It felt like we were balancing an entire army of cups on trays not designed to carry them. Weaving through the crowded room with our precarious burdens, the backpack slipped lower on John's arm, threatening the stew with disaster before we ever got to our table. But we made it without mishap to the seating area.

     Our troubles might have been over had there been tables in the room we were directed to. But there weren't. Only rows of chairs with thickly padded cloth seats that rested upon beautiful, wall-to-wall carpeting.  

     We stood knock-kneed in front of four chairs, only slightly better off than we had been during the balancing act it took to get there. I sat the Girlie’s tray on a chair and had her stand in front of it. So far so good.  

     But it happened. You knew it would, right? Somewhere between the Girlie dropping a forkful of salad onto the carpet and The Boy losing part of his cookie down the inside of his shirt, the soup fell. It didn't land gently on its side with a few stray beans spilling out, this was a full-blown crash, landing entirely up-side-down on that beautiful carpet.  

     John was sweating profusely. 

     Our saving factors were three. The first was the tightly woven nap of the carpet; the second was the thickness of the stew; and the third was a wet washcloth I had in my bag. Between the three, the mess cleaned up beautifully.  

     The best part of the spill was that it broke the stress of potential disaster. When the dreaded became reality, we started laughing at the absurdity of the situation: two preschoolers, soup and fruit cups, and no table.  

     And lunch was over. I gladly pitched the offending Styrofoam cups into the trash, mean ol' things.  

     But even then, things did not improve. Restless little legs were tired of this, a tiredness so deep it was not cured by running around outside during lunch break.  Sessions ran back to back and were an hour long. We burned through all of our snacks, stickers, and books in a single session.  Sitting all day was a lot to ask of a child who appreciates nothing the speaker is saying. So we cut out early.

     On the way home, John and I discussed the day and what the expectations should be of a child.  I regretted that I hadn’t taken the children out for some exercise during one of the sessions. That would have offered some diversion and worn off some of the energy that was building for the Grand Finale in the last session. In that period, the words of the speaker were only background music to my test in child management skills as I tried to save fellow attendees from a side-ring circus. Ironically, this session was held in a real dining room where the children and I sat at a table only long enough for them to color two pages apiece on high speed and to consume all of the chocolates in the little bowl on the table. Then we gathered our things and left.

     It had been a long afternoon for fledgling parents. Long enough that he looked at his tired wife on the way home and said, “Do you need some coffee?”

     “Yes,” she answered. “I’ll take an espresso. Intravenously.”

     At least they were laughing.

     For a long time afterwards, the day was an icon of stressful parenting. Other potentially challenging situations were overshadowed by the memory. "Hey,” we would say encouragingly, “if we survived REACH, this will be a no-brainer."  

     Experience has made us wiser. In discussing the possibility of me attending a writers’ conference, John already has made a generous offer: “I’ll be happy to take you to one when the baby is older. The children and I will find something fun to do in the area during the day. That way we can see each other in the evening, and you’ll be able to enjoy the conference.”

     And I say, what a good idea.

Photo sourced from pixabay.com