GIMME SHELTER! Brentwood Moms Unite Behind A Crusade for Shade
	January/February 2005

by Jennifer Uresti and Toni Hay
Photos by Russell Byrne

The heat of summer is long gone, but it has left a strong memory in the minds of many of us — especially we who are members of the MOMS Clubs of Brentwood. We meet in local parks for a variety of activities with each other and with our children. In the middle of summer we carry out some of our meetings only with great difficulty. During many mid-summer days the temperature gets to 110° or higher in the sun.

The problem with some of the parks is that their whole recreational area is in unprotected sunshine. The kind of heat you can get in those places is not simply uncomfortable, it can be dangerous to young children. While playing games in those conditions, children can easily become dehydrated or get heatstroke. Even for the moms — especially those who might be in the later stages of pregnancy — such unprotected sunshine can be dangerous.

The inability to get out of continuous exposure to direct sunlight is also a bad thing, given the clear connection that has been made between skin cancer and sunshine. Some of us carry sunblock sticks on our key chains.

On some hot July or August days the sun is too hot by 9 o’clock in the morning for us to be comfortable using the parks that, after all, were created as outdoor community recreation areas.

Most of these parks are fairly new and the trees that were planted are still only saplings. Our kids will be working on their Master’s degrees before the trees are able to provide any real shade. So we just sit there in the scorching sunshine and sweat. Or else we simply go home and sit by ourselves in the air conditioning in front of the living room TV set.

If we only had shady areas in our parks, we could carry out our activities and the kids would get healthy exercise. We all would be able to continue our good social times with each other. In other words, the whole point of belonging to a MOMS Club, in the first place, wouldn’t be lost on hot summer days.

A Crusade to Get Shade
One of our members stood up in a meeting a few months ago and asked, “Since we have no shade in our parks, why don’t we put up some shade structures ourselves?”

It was such a sensible idea that we all got behind it and both of the Brentwood MOMS Clubs are now working together on a plan to provide some shade in some of our local parks.

The first thing we did was to target the parks lacking shady areas that we visit most regularly. We then started a series of meetings with Craig Bronzan and Janet Hansen from the City Parks and Recreation Department.

We had a subsequent meeting with the Parks Commissioners at which we introduced ourselves and told them what we wanted to do.

We’ve been pleased with the results. Sandy Meyer and Tom Jones, for example, have been very supportive of our efforts. In particular, they have been working with us to identify suitable equipment.

The next step was to figure out costs and budget and to begin fund-raising.

We formed ourselves into a Task Force. We chose the term “task force” rather than “committee” to reinforce the fact that we were task-oriented. We have about 15 members in the task force, but the rest of the area members are also prepared to help.

We’re putting on a number of fundraisers:

Nights at area restaurants.

January 1 reverse draw. Tickets sold through the members or on the Web. Tickets are $50 each with a cut-off at 300 tickets.

January 15 CROP at Scrap That Idea.

February 1 fundraiser at Around the Mantle.

February 26 bus trip for Slots or Shops.

April 16 spring-cleaning sale at the Aquatic Center parking lot.

April golf tournament.

These are subject to change. Get the final details about these and other fundraisers on our website at www.shadecrusade.org.

Direct deposits for the Crusade for Shade may be made at Fremont Bank, “MOMS Club of Brentwood East Crusade for Shade Account.”

We’ve been amazed and pleased by the support we’ve been getting from the community. Real estate agents, for example, are doing things like giving us $500 from each sale of a house or a percentage of all the sales in a year. ICI Paint gives a rebate to us for everyone who mentions MOMS Club.

May 1 is the target goal for when we want to have the money gathered. At that point we can begin to plan ordering and installation.

Our MOMS Clubs take on a service project each year that is dedicated to children within the community. During recent years we took on smaller projects, such as Toys For Tots, etc. This year we wanted to really impact our community with our shade structures crusade. We’re going to do something that will make Brentwood a nicer place for all children than it would have been if we hadn’t caught this vision.

Gathering Together to Give and Receive
Our MOMS Clubs are part of an international organization that numbers 750,000 mothers of children in the United States alone. The two Brentwood MOMS Clubs are divided into East and West with about 150 total members in both clubs.

Our name, MOMS, is an acrostic meaning “Moms Offering Moms Support.” We have banned together in this club, as our name suggests, in order to support one another in carrying out the important issues of parenthood.

We help and encourage each other as we strive together to raise healthy, happy children, and to manage our affairs at home, without losing our sanity. We offer each other emotional support. Many of us can testify to the fact that when your kid has been coughing his cookies for 70 hours straight, you really need help.

Our Brentwood MOMS Clubs have no sense of cliquishness about them. We reach out to support moms, whether or not they are members of our club. For example, a terrible fire occurred in the house of a neighbor to one of our moms. Our club member said to the distraught mother. “I want to help you. I’ll stay with you during this time.”

When they heard the story, all of the other moms in the club pitched in to provide a crib, diapers, gift certificates, clothes, dresser, nightstand, and a stroller.

The club did all of that for the poor woman — and she wasn’t even a member!

Besides supporting parents, the Brentwood MOMS Club also provides great support for our children. Our kids now have a group of friends that they become excited about going to see. “Yeah!” they might say, for example. “I’m going to see Allison!” or “I’m going to be with Xander!”

Belonging to a group of peers helps our children learn important socializing skills, which they need in order to get along in preschool and kindergarten.

Meeting Each Other at the Point of Need
The MOMS clubs are wonderful sources of messages that are constantly being passed around from one member to another. For example, “You’re not the only person to have a teething baby.” Any of us in that situation can log into the Internet at two o’clock in the morning, open our chat software, and possibly hook up with another mom who is in the same situation. We can reach through our broadband connection from one house to another and hold each other’s hand for a few wonderful moments.

A mom showed up at a recent garage sale and said, “I didn’t come to you because of your garage sale, I came because of you. You are the only one who understands what I’m going through.” That’s so important. We’re there for each other. We don’t have to go through tough times with the kids or with the family by ourselves.

Through the common ground set up by the MOMS Club we are able to share information with each other. We show each other where to find playgroups. We recommend to one another where to find a good story-time meeting, or pediatrician, or electrician (or a warning about any one of these). As our kids outgrow them, we share toys and clothes with each other.

The clubs organize a Moms Night Out once a month. We also organize Couples Night Out, and even Family Day. We organize playgroups for all the kids, beginning with little tiny ones. Our children grow up together with the children from their particular group.

The dividing line between the two groups is Minnesota Ave, which is also the boundary between the two school districts. So in some cases our kids are initiating relationships with another child that they will maintain through senior high school. Some of our kids are going to never be able to remember a time when they didn’t know some of their friends they met at one of our early-age playgroups.

Living on a Single Income in a Double Income World
Many of us got into the MOMS Club because we needed something more in our lives than grocery lists and scrapbooking. We needed something that would use our brains.

Even though we live in small communities, it is still easy to feel lonely and disconnected. The MOMS Club really creates a close-knit community for us to belong to.

We stay home with our children. Our husbands are gone 12 hours a day, perhaps, or maybe two weeks at a time. There really are a lot of stay-at-home moms in East County. In fact, many of us moved here simply because the area offered us the opportunity of staying home with our children.

Most of us are really happy, for the most part, with our choice. We’re bucking a lot of the current trends of people trying to have it all. The fact is that trends are moving back towards having a primary care giver at home watching the kids. So for the past decade the pressure has come off of being stay-at-home moms; we no longer have to feel like second-class citizens if we choose to take care of our home and family as a full-time occupation.

Some of us are actually older and have taken on the raising of our children as something like a second career. Some of our moms are still pursuing their careers in telecommuting professions that vary from teaching to web design.

We’re actually riding a wave that’s sweeping through the East County. There’s a lot more resources available now for people who don’t run off to work someplace every day. New clubs and groups of one kind or another are starting up all the time. The movement toward supporting full-time stay-at-home parents is really surging these days.

The club provides us important opportunities for engaging in a variety of activities that support our families, our friends, and ourselves. The shade structures crusade is the most recent and one of the largest of these.

Getting the shade structures into place in the parks where we meet together will make us even more effective in meeting the good purposes for which the MOMS Clubs of Brentwood were created.

The Rolling Stones wrote the famous lines:

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet

The situation in our little parks on a hot August morning is not as serious for us as it apparently was for the Stones, but the cry of our moms and their children last summer might have been the same as the title of their song, “Gimme Shelter!”

We’re listening to the cry and are really determined to put into our parks the shelter that the moms and children need, and that all of the area residents deserve to have.

If you want to help us with our shade structures project, or if you are a mom with young children and just want to get in on the good things we’ve got going on in our clubs, give us a ring or send us an email.

925-240-5742 (West — Jennifer)
925-513-4074 (East — Toni)
shadecrusade@yahoogroups.com
www.shadecrusade.org