Here’s to the moms who just got their kids back to school. 

You started in July with classroom supply lists and a plan: Do you take each child separately? Order it all online? Is there ever a time that back-to-school back corner of Target is not overrun with red carts and stress? 

No matter—it had to be done. So you made it happen.

You looked through last year’s backpacks, possibly untouched since May or June, crumpled papers and broken pencil bits still entombed. You gauged if they’d survive another nine months of schlepping to and fro; yes, you decided. Or maybe no. You can buy a new backpack in February, you reasoned, just as well as in August. 

Whatever the answer was, you made it happen.

You put open house night on the calendar and a reminder (or two) on your phone. Your slightly slacky summer brain would probably miss the year’s first assignment if you didn’t prompt it often. And those pictures with new teachers don’t take themselves. 

So you got there. You made it happen. 

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You sifted through closets and made kids try on shoes and shorts and shirts, marveling at the way feet and arms and legs just will. not. stop. growing. You made a trip to a shoe store or seven (because even when you find the shoes Sally likes, Murphy’s Law states the store will not have Sally’s size in stock). You waited outside dressing rooms while kids tried on shirts and pants and attitudes. 

And even though your pocketbook protested (everything just keeps getting more expensive!), you made it happen. 

You scheduled back-to-school haircuts. Dental appointments. Doctor visits. You printed out class schedules and lunch menus, handbooks and practice times. You packed snacks and labeled glue sticks (WHY?!) and paid activity fees. 

You were exhausted by the mental load of it all, but you made it happen.  

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You wore a too-bright smile that first early morning, maybe made pancakes with smiley faces and eggs for good measure. You ushered everyone out the door early to take first day of school picures, the ones you’d post later on Facebook and Instagram. “Have the best year!” you typed in the caption. “Summer flew by!” 

And it did. Faster than any summer before. The kids grew a little bit taller and got a little bit older, and you felt a few more sands of these precious years slip through your fingers. 

There’s an invisible load mothers shoulder every day, a thousand tiny decisions and plans and tasks we make that almost no one notices. 

But, from one mother to another, please hear this: what you’re doing makes all the difference. You make it happen, day in and day out. So in case no one else tells you today—thanks, mom. You are incredible. 

Originally published on the author’s Facebook page