Bourgeois Dilemma #12: the teachers' holiday gift is coming due.

in 2002 we were lucky enough to gain admission for annie at an unbelievable school. I've never been particularly studied about life choices (if we had, in fact, had a plan we probably wouldn't have stayed in manhattan with our particular combination of a small income and desire for the good life - champagne taste on a beer budget as my first boss in advertising told me). but in this case, given the hype about school, I had dutifully gone to the parent's league on the upper east side to learn what to do. In their book was the name of a school we thought a friend had recommended even though it seemed odd that our upper west side jewish intelligentsia parenting guru neighbor would recommend a school named for two saints, we fell in love with the place. the head was brilliant, the facility was fabulous, and the people seemed normal. done.

she was 3, and the oldest in the class of 10 children.

round about december first, an email comes from the class mother regarding the collection of money for christmas gifts to the three teachers. yes, christmas. it's an episcopal school and we are ok with that. yes, three teachers to ten children (they are, after all only 2 and 3). my older sister and her partner are both educators, and bemoan the annual haul of scented candles and bath soaps, so i felt strongly that we should not go this route. utilizing the "reply all" I have since un-learned in these class mother dialogues I lobbed in that I thought it might be nice to use the collected money to give the teachers an amex gift card and have the children do some crafty thing as well. oh yes, nice idea replied another mom adding that she had some of those styrofoam balls and maybe the kids could make ornaments for the teachers.

I participate in this exchange from my bowling alley sized windowed office on the 40th floor at dag hammarskjold plaza facing south. I was, after all, an executive. just a little over a year before we had watched in horror as the first tower collapsed. now, I am swept up in the drama of styrofoam ornaments which, I am convinced, if decorated with the small motor skills available to the 20 hands of the toddler class at St. Hilda's & St. Hugh's, will look awful. my phone is ringing off of the hook and work emails are pinging in to the inbox with alarming frequency. it's the time of year when everything seems to go sideways in advance of the holidays and we are launching a new training program at the same time as drawing together lists of people who will be laid off just after the first of the year. the economy is fine, at this stage it's just the company that isn't, so we have the luxury of being nice and not "ruining people's holiday." Happy new year! Nice to see you! Sorry, this won't be an easy conversation for either of us.

but, at this moment, all of that is just in the background. I am swept away by a vision that these gifted children won't be gluing yarn and pushing glitter jewels into yucky scratchy styofoam, they will be artfully decorating gold and silver cardboard stars with cute stickers. And I am going to take care of it. with a spasm that equated to a tourette's syndrome meets martha stewart, I jump on to the email chain with a definitive statement:

I think ornaments is a great idea! My sister once gave us one she had made on a cardboard star that was so cute! Why don't I take care of picking up some supplies for the kids to use! I can drop off bags for everyone before the weekend!

I refrain from using exclamation points in 99.9% of correspondence. yet, in the email with the school mothers, they serve as some sort of indication of affiliation and positive spirit. so as to say "I am not taking over this project because i am a total control freak, I am taking it over because I am so nice, really!"

naturally, I extend this offer and then lost track of it until the tuesday before the friday the kids need to get their materials. after all, I wrote every paper at college the morning it was due much to the chagrin of my studious roommate who would often find me in bed under a comforter with a beer and a le carre novel the night before some whopper was due. "oh," she would exclaim in a hopeful tone, "you finished your paper?". people don't change. there's a hallmark store as well as staples within a few blocks of my office, so I am not worried at all. not worried enough is more like it. I set out on thursday at 11:30, telling my assistant marla I will be gone for a half hour. it's the day of the training program launch and morale building cocktails, so to say we are busy is an understatement. as the hr director, I also have meeting each 45 minutes to talk to department heads about their plans.

first stop, the hallmark store. plenty of noxious bayberry scented holiday gift baskets. no silver stars. no gold stars. staples. what was I thinking? they don't even have an art supply in sight. it is, after all, midtown. last attempt is a stationers that has plenty of folder covers but none metallic and certainly not stars. it's noon or later and I am in a cold sweat. what will the teachers do without their stars? what will the other mothers think? wracking my brain I remember lee's, the proper art shop near my dentist. not altogether convenient as it's west 57th street, but surely I can whip in there and get what I need. I phone marla who lets me know in her uniquely uplifting australian conservatory trained opera singer voice that everything is fine.

I ascertain that holiday gridlock calls for the subway so across and up I rush. Lee's beckons with holiday cocktail napkins, english style christmas crackers and the like that adorn the front of the shop, but it's materials I need so I head to the back. nothing near the craft section. I walk around to the man who cuts mats and ask him, convinced that someone in charge of rigid paper supplies will know about stars. he shrugs. I make another loop around. easily available, naturally, are the styrofoam balls. but I am not going there. they do have sheets of metallic poster board. I take one and return to the disaffected mat cutter. "don't you have anything that I might even be able to use to cut a star out of this? please?" it's 12:30 and I am beyond desperate.

with a subtle move, he opens a drawer and pulls out an oak tag star. "I guess there's this one. I was saving it for myself, but you can have it for $2." $2? doesn't he recognize the wild-eyed gaze of an overextended holiday season full time working mother? Done. I snatch up 5 sheets of silver, 5 sheets of gold and 5 sheets of bronze- why not? and run to the register. In the cab, I call marla. thankfully, I work in an ad agency with a studio and myself was a picture framer to support an italian shoe habit in college, so I know what I am doing. "marla, I've got what I need, sort of. would you go to the studio and get a board and a cutter?" perennially can-do and wonderful marla doesn't even ask. I spend the next 2 hours cutting stars. when someone comes in for a meeting, I announce "don't worry, I am paying the utmost attention to you, I will just be cutting these stars while we talk." No problem. the plan is to have each child make two stars, from which we will create a lovely assortment for each of the three teachers. So I need to cut 20 stars. And I have about two hours - one if I am lucky in the office and one when I get home.

The cutting is careful but not painstaking work and it seems to be going well. but I keep getting interrupted by co-workers with questions, the ringing phone and the like. and there's the looming presentation and event to manage at 4. I realize that there's no way I am going to finish, and, in what seems a stroke of genius, ask Marla if she would possibly mind cutting just a few remaining stars. If she's willing, I can carry the materials home and after annie is safely in bed, sort them into the brown paper lunch bags with the stickers and instructions that will be labelled with each child's name. Naturally, she's game.

I go out into the real world of my workplace. Make a presentation to about 75 people and then am mingling at the cocktail hour. In my compulsive and compartmentalized brain, the issue of the stars and the gifts and the children that will make them is fully separate from the eager young ad men and women we are aiming to form into more perfect members of contemporary business society. until I see marla coming around the corner to ask me about something to do with the caterer. she is lovely as ever, nearly six feet tall with a proper suit and scarf, blond hair and perfect lipstick. But she has a huge white gauze bandage on her hand. given that I am surrounded by colleagues, I cannot really do anything about the hand which has clearly been severed by the star cutting blade - all I can do is let her know with my eyes that I am horrified. she smiles and says "it's nothing." oh god. what have I done?

later that night, much later, as I am neatly labelling the 10 bags with their stars, stickers, pipe cleaners all apportioned for the little angels of the toddler room, I call marla and she confirms that she really is fine. the kids complete the ornaments with all of their inborn artistic ability (rest assured it's easy enough to tell which ones the kids made and which ones their parents made on their behalf). and the teachers are touched.

seven years later, I have learned. as the end of the year present of aprons with self portraits of each child is presented to each of mary's nursery teachers, I clap and smile. over in annie's third grade room, I am not even there when the gifts are presented.

all I do is write the check.