It’s been three weeks since I last posted. Holy falling off the bandwagon! That’s backwards actually. I haven’t fallen off the bandwagon, I’ve been driving it non-stop, ferrying my teenage daughters everywhere they need to go.
Take today, for instance. I picked up my moppets from school at three p.m., scooted down the street to Tim Horton’s for a quick snack (“Mom,” Lindsay pleaded, “I am freezing. I need a French vanilla), then across the road to Fabricland to check out potential Halloween costume materials (“Do you really think we can pull off a mermaid costume this late in the game?”), finally doubling-back to the mall to pick up a long-sleeved T-shirt for Lindsay’s school uniform. Regulation white, of course.
We then drove home, only to depart twenty minutes later for Sarah’s four- thirty singing lesson. Because I was momentarily distracted by the task of dissecting a pomegranate, we left with only eight minutes to make the twelve minute drive across town. Usually I leave early, deliberately adding five minutes as hedge against traffic lights or slow-moving farm vehicles. Today, though, I white-knuckled it across the highway, forcing myself to drive the speed limit and repeating a silent mantra: it is okay if she is a few minutes later. The world will not end, really it won’t.
Sarah’s lesson spans a scant half-hour, so I drove to a lakeside park nearby, where I sat and stared into space for fifteen minutes, grateful for the peace. When we returned home, Sarah scurried into the house and I meditated in the driver’s seat waiting for the changing of guard, as Lindsay now needed a ride to her boyfriend’s house (eight minutes, give or take the temperamental stoplight at Laclie Street). As it stands now, I have exactly three minutes to finish this post before I have to drive Sarah to her Oliver! rehearsal in a tiny hamlet twenty-minutes east of town. There won’t be any point in coming back, as her session last only an hour. [Sure enough, I didn’t even finish this paragraph and am now typing by the dim glow of my van’s interior lights.]
This isn’t even the heavy driving day. Twice a week, we trek to a cheerleading club in another town, where Lindsay will spend four hours at a time tumbling and stunting. We leave hastily after school and don’t pull into the garage until ten-thirty p.m.
Too much? Yeah, some days it feels like that.
But this is the choice I’ve made. I am a woman with two law degrees and a high-ranking job spelled M-O-M. The van is where I live, so I suppose this is a sign that I need to make accommodations, take my blog show on the road and master the art of posting from my Blackberry, since, more often than not, I am behind the wheel of my van and not in front of my laptop. And no, I will not type while driving. I may dictate notes to my daughter, though, thoughts to be scribbled on a napkin from the stash in the glove compartment.
How do you spell that mom?
It’s l-o-v-e, dear.