The Boss of Everything

Yesterday early I threw a load of laundry outside on the line to dry, then walked the quick mile over to campus to pick up a Zipcar. We needed the wheels to get to an alumni picnic away up yonder in Seattle.  As I was walking to campus on that glorious morning, I was thinking about an irksome woman on Facebook.

A friend of mine, an orchestra musician and mother of two small boys, had posted about the scheduling nightmare she's navigating, childcare, etc.  Totally valid.  The stress is real; the problem is real.

One of her friends—let's go ahead and call her Irksome Woman—said something along the lines of "Hate to break it to you, honey, but it only gets worse as they get older."  Not helpful, and, in my case, untrue.  (As much as I loved them, and as adorable as they were, everything about parenting the wee tyrants very small children, in my experience, is a special hell.) To comfort my friend, I mentioned that, actually, I found that the scheduling got easier for us as the boys got older.

Irksome Woman said, "Really?!"  Then reported at length her transportation woes with her children involved with different activities.  And as any parent knows, scheduling of activities is as much a transportation issue as it is one of time.

Really!  As the boys got to be old enough to ride their bikes to piano lessons or other activities, when they were old enough to be left alone for a few minutes so I could run to the store, little by slowly the transportation and scheduling stress was alleviated.

Well, poor Irksome Woman.  Riding bikes is not an option for her children.  She has to drive her progeny hither and yon because their activities are so far away.  And as a timely demonstration of how burdened she is, at that very moment had received a text from her child who was going to need a ride home from such-and-so thirty minutes early, from a place thirty minutes away, and she was still in her pajamas when she got the text, meaning she had to leave right that second.  "Bye!"

(I'm not being kind here, but, really, she irks me!)

On our drive up to the picnic together, zip-zipping along in our Zipcar, I was describing this exchange to my older son.  When I got to the "...she has to drive" part, my son interjected, "She doesn't HAVE to do anything."  

True enough!

I have kept it more or less a secret all these years that one of the most pressing motivating factors in my choice to homeschool was the driving.  The driving was out of control, and I found it an inhumane way to live.  I did not want to be the chauffeur.  Of course there were many other reasons, but the insanity of that daily torture, finding a parking spot, waiting, loading the small sibling in and out of the vehicle — so much wasted time.  Yes, we rode our bikes sometimes, a much more pleasant experience, but often that was not a viable option.

There came a point when I realized I didn't HAVE to do that.  Okay, maybe not the Boss of Everything, but I could be the Boss of School.  I could be the Boss of our Time.  

Now.  Irksome Woman's stress is real stress, no denying it.  (And if she needs to be the victim of her children's activities, whatever.  Not my problem.) And I am sympathetic; I do remember that when we are in the thick of it, when the stress is overwhelming, it's easy to forget that it is temporary, that the children grow up. But that little exchange was a reminder to me that we Americans, most of us, anyway, design our lives to be lived out of our cars.  Dependence on a car is just built in.  The unfortunate necessity of a car, driving, is the default.  

And that's a shame.