Mondays in May/ Actually It's Tuesday/But It's All the Same To Me For a Few More Weeks

I am learning to take advantage of the days when my energy rises to almost normal levels. Following a few flat on my face days, I woke up this morning at 5:00 and told Mr. Pom he could forgo the toat and coffee that he has so adorably brought to me every morning that I've been home.

Instead, I called sister #5 and hitched a before school ride to Starbucks. She teaches up the street and dropped me off after she dropped my nephew off at junio high. She waited for my drink, settled me at a table.  and told me to be good and not get lost while she was gone. If I can last until her lunch time, she'll drive me home, otherwise I will call a cab. I have forgotten 90% of what I once knew, but I still remember the phone number for the local cab company.

When we were growing up, when there were at least 4 of us at home, there rarely was an extra car to use to get anywhere. For many years, my parents only had one car and my mother's refrain whenever we wanted to join a club or go somewhere with friends was, "as long as you can get there". We learned the bus routes, cab company phone numbers, and made friends with those who had cars or whose fathers were home earlier in the evenings than ours.

I don't think my own kids have ever been on a city bus in their lives, except those designated strictly for transporting the junior high kids to and from school.   When we moved to Memphis, The Princess was enrolled in a magnet high school about 5 miles from our house. The school was on a main street that had regular city bus transportation. When car pooling to 3 different schools became too complex to handle, I proposed she take the bus home. My own friends and neighbors were aghast that I would allow a child, even a high schooler, to travel on a city bus - alone.

Since I had taken a city bus home by myself from second grade onwards,  and traveled extensively to and from main street and the public library by city bus all my youth, I was taken aback by their reactions.  It was as if I proposed she be driven by a pedophile to and from school. So of course, I quickly rearranged the car pools and drove her to and from.

I think kids miss a lot being driven around in  minivans and SUVS. They see the world through glass and chrome gas-powered bubbles. Their feet rarely touch the ground and they certainly have no experience of leaning against a storefront in the rain, waiting for the "M" to arrive, noticing the smells from the bakery, the line of people waiting to buy lottery tickets, or watching the tight-knit families pushing a stroller with one hand and holding the hand of a preschooler with another.

Of course, this is a suburban and exurban situation. If you live in the city, you certainly aren't ferrying your kids - though I expect if they go to private schools, there are private school drivers who do so. I'd like my kids to be city-savvy and street-wise. I'd like them not to react to the idea of taking a cab as a declaration of a repudiation of my mothering role. They should know how to scramble for exact change, how to buy a token, how to request a transfer, and how to read bus and subway maps.

Aside from the expense, I don't hesitate to take a cab when all else fails. I won't pretend, however, that I have taken a bus myself in the last 20 years. I've become soft and pudgy, reluctant to stand on street corners and have my timetable revolve around their's. I don't know if buses are safe travel for kids these days or not. I do know that a measure of independence goes a long way to providing the ability to make a way in the world, a way that is not garnered on the soccer field, in AP classes, or in the back of mom's van.

I've officially become a relic: "in my day" is now my point of view.  Which puts a greater distance between myself and my kids' generation than any bus belching exhaust could ever do.