Last night was parent/teacher conference night at Gal Smiley’s preschool. Sir Monkeypants got to attend, and we were all very excited about it, even though we don’t have anything in particular to talk to the teachers about. Want to tell us how awesome our kid is? Be our guest! Can’t wait!

When I was in school, I used to make my mom attend all of my meet-the-teacher evenings, even though she’d try to get out of it.

Mom: It’s parent-teacher night tonight, but I don’t think I have to go.
Me: Oh…but…couldn’t you go anyway?
Mom: But you’re doing fine at school. I don’t need to go talk to them just to hear that you’re doing fine.
Me: But everyone else’s parents are going!!
Mom: Oh alright, don’t have a cow.

Then she’d actually have to get a sitter and everything, just to go and spend three minutes with the teacher in which the teacher told her that everything was, in fact, fine. I even made her go to the first parent-teacher night when I was in high school, I was that geeky.

Other parent: You gave my kid a C!!
Another parent: You gave my kid a detention!
And another parent: You didn’t put my kid on the mathletes team!
My Mom: Uh…I don’t actually have anything to say, I’m just here because my kid really really wanted me to show up.

And show up she did. It really meant a lot to me that she always went; it just made me feel like she cared. Even though she’d trudge over there just to spend a few minutes chatting about the weather with my teacher, it made me feel good to be able to say to the other kids in my class — in an offhand way, like it was totally embarrassing — “Yeah, my mom’s comin’ tonight.”

So thanks Mom, for showing up.

Sir Monkeypants and I had a talk about this last year when we had our very first parent-teacher conference for the Captain. He remembered feeling exactly the same way — that even though he did fine in school and there was nothing to discuss, he just really wanted his parents to come out and meet the teacher and see his world and be a part of it. Unfortunately, both his parents worked strict hours and could rarely actually make these events. Which only makes more determined to not miss any of his own kids’ meet-and-greets.

I’m so happy to find that this is yet another issue on which and I see eye-to-eye. Conventional wisdom tells you to talk about the Big Issues upfront before you get married — how many kids? what religion? how will we share finances? — but and I totally skipped that part. We didn’t really talk about any of the big things, but amazingly, I find we are completely in sync on every major issue. When it comes to raising our kids, again, we could/should have talked about everything ahead of time, but really, I think that’s all bogus — you can think about some situations in advance, but when you’re in the moment, you don’t really know how you are going to react to things; you can’t imagine every conceiveable scenario and have a plan ready to go. So again, I feel so lucky that, every step of the way, I’ve been happy to say that I completely support and agree with . I feel 100% comfortable with him being the other parent in this house; I like the way he is raising our kids.

And for that, I am truly thankful.

(Just don’t bring up the laundry sorting thing.)