Fear From The Projects

The month of October scares me. Not because it is the month of Halloween, although, the prices of the Halloween costumes are rather frightening.  Not because we are in the middle of a government shutdown, although the shameful behavior of elected officials does make my skin crawl. October terrifies me because it seems to be the month when school is settled in and projects start to arrive at home. I am not a project person. While some parents can’t wait to break out the glue, design patterns and rulers I would rather write a 10 page paper on the parallel relationship between blinding headaches and dioramas. 

I have been a participant either active or supervisory for school projects for over a decade and the one thing I am certain of is that at the very heart of school projects is every fear and inadequacy I ever had. I have passed this outlook on to my children. Up until my children started grade school we did many “craft projects” to fill time. I considered this a wonderful time as my kids were delighted by my ability to string macaroni necklaces and make paper bag puppets. Little did they know the truth that I had no actual craft skill. In comparison to my children, ages three and one at the time, I was a master at coloring, lacing, cutting and gluing. I lavished them with praise for their projects as well creating what I hoped would be confidence in their abilities to create.   

It was with a mingle of horror and dread when in October of second grade the first family project arrived home.  We had to make a scarecrow. Resisting the urge passed down from my own days in grade school when my parents would just purchase a scarecrow from the local K-Mart and call it a day, I set out to make this scarecrow.  My daughter’s interest lasted as long as gathering supplies. Then, in addition to completing a project that made me yearn for the comfort of eyebrow waxing, I had to listen to “I don’t want to do this” like a dripping faucet for five hours. In the end I managed to jam an orange rubber kick ball (with a face drawn on) atop a coat hanger, draped an old shirt over a hanger, stuffed it with straw, duct taped a stick to the back and placed a Little Mermaid wig on top and called it a day.  My daughter was in awe at my handy work until she arrived at school and saw other childrens’ scarecrows. As expected any illusion of my talent rolled away just like her scarecrow’s kickball head when she presented it to the class.

Projects have steadily gone downhill from there, resulting in many years of family discord to rival Chevy Chase Vacation movies.  However, by the Castle Project of  2012, I have learned that my kids are quite capable of turning out projects on their own as I provide the same encouragement I did when they glued leaves to themselves back in the pre-school days. They are aware that classmates will turn out very nice projects, such as hand-carved replicas of ancient castles with candle light reflecting in the windows surrounded by craft store added foliage and running water moats. They also know theirs will not be of that caliber. Yet, to my delight, after the initial “I don’t want to,”  “I’ll do it later,” “This is dumb,” and “Why,” left to their own devices and my check book, the projects they turn out are actually good. It’s also nice that they are entirely theirs and without any of my competitive anxiety. So maybe I don’t have anything to fear from the projects, they got this one.