Pink Think: “I have the life of Riley. I take my kids to school, do a bit of work in the afternoon, pick my kids up, microwave a meal, hang out with my kids, and work for a couple of hours.” – Sheena Easton
photo by Arvind Balaraman
In three hours, I will be picking up my oldest from school for the last time this school year, and the quiet of my mornings as I know it will be gone for the next three summer months.
No more “Mom School Bus”.
After the first few weeks of school, it became evident that my two older kids hated going on the school bus. When I probed, they said they didn’t like the profanity, the rudeness. So finally, I agreed to take them to, and pick them up from, school.
I didn’t love the idea, not at first, the sliver of environmentalist in me objecting to all that pollution on our country road. Back and forth, back and forth, at my kids’ beck and call. My days measured by their school bell. And yet I grew to love it.
Every morning, after I’d taken my oldest ones to school, I would check my e-mail while my youngest, who is 11, practiced her piano and flute. I would hear the cats scratching on the french doors of the front room wanting in while she played the flute. If there were a few minutes, my youngest would curl up on the couch and read a book. And then it was time to take her to school.
On the way, we would talk. She told me about her classmates who wanted to put on plays at recess, and how, today, they would be wearing capes and play dress-up. Sometimes, if I was lucky, my two older ones would open up to me, too, about things that frustrated them about the art contest judging, or that life was good and wasn’t it awesome that we live in this fabulous world?
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When I was in high school, my family owned an ancient lumbering lime green Toyota that mortified me to no end. But it was nice to get picked up at the end of the day.
My girlfriends and I would pile in and the driver would drop them off near our house so they could take a jeepney to their house. We called that Toyota our school bus. In that “school bus” we laughed and giggled over our crushes, and we talked like the driver couldn’t hear us. But I know he could because every so often, he would roll his eyes.
***
Today, I’m thinking about that again, and how the short commute to school and back forms such an indelible memory in the school experience, when I was a student, and now as a mother. And how glad I could be my kids’ “school bus” this year.
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