We live in the suburbs and Alex commutes to work in DC every day. This is kind of a notorious commute because of traffic, crazy roads, and general fuckery. My morning get-the-kids-to-school commute is now officially longer than his.

It is possible, just maybe, that you have noticed me whining about this before. Did I mention that I have kids going to two separate schools and that they both have the EXACT SAME 20-MINUTE DROP OFF WINDOW in the morning?

Oh, by the way, the schools are twenty-THREE minutes apart.

Basically I drop Sam off early and I drop Quinn and Jack off late. No one has yelled at me yet, but I’m waiting for the day that I get it at both schools. I’m kind of hoping that if I look pathetic enough and whine loudly and often enough about how hard I’m trying my damnedest, then they’ll let me slide.

I feel palpable relief as Jack and Quinn get out of the car, especially if I’m not the very, very last vehicle at drop off or if the school patrol is still outside when we pull up. That means we’re not EGREGIOUSLY late.

It makes me miss the days last year, when we walked out of the house at 8:25 to catch the bus and I was back home by 8:45 at the latest. Those were the days. There is a bus option this year as well, but t would mean Sam is on the bus for a looooong time, and I just can’t do that to him.

After school is a little bit less of a clusterfuck because I determined that I couldn’t possible be in more than one place at one time, so I put all three kids on their different buses and it is my job to collect them all at the end of the day.

Jack is on the same bus with the same driver that he has had since kindergarten, and I LOVE her. She is exactly the right mix of protective and flexible. Seriously, I’d buy her a puppy if puppies weren’t so horrible. He gets home first and then he and I sit at the bus stop and watch ants.

I do enjoy the first part of the year when Jack’s bus confuses the hell out of everyone else at the stop. I often have a lot of conversations about (1) what school Jack goes to (2) is he not in class with everyone else? (3) well, then why is he on a different bus? (4) wait, why didn’t my kid get off that bus? (5) oh, then your kid goes to a different school?

They all catch on in a couple of days. It doesn’t help many of this conversations happen with me and my conversation partner speaking different languages. I really should learn the words and phrases “autism” and “special education” and “this is not your child’s bus” in Spanish. It would solve a whole lot of bus stop issues.

But there we are, spreading special education awareness everywhere we go.

Eventually the regular bus arrives and Quinn gets off. Except for one day last week when he didn’t get off and I was all, huh, that’s weird, he’s not at home, so he should be here, and I called the school and they were all “but we put him on the bus” and in my head I was all “I assure you, you did not,” but it worked out completely fine.

He ended up on the wrong bus, but says he figured it out when the bus didn’t take him home. By the time I got to the school five minutes after he didn’t get off his bus, he was already there. He was briefly upset and then forgot all about it. Honestly, I feel worse for the adults at the school who probably suffered terrible heart palpitations when they thought he might be lost. Their mental scars will last far longer than Quinn’s.

Even me, who is usually like MY CHILDREN! MY PRECIOUS CHILDREN! I WILL DESTROY YOU IF YOU MESS WITH MY CHILDREN! was kinda meh about the whole thing. I had a few minutes when I was worried because I know several people (myself included) who have had scarring experiences with children being left alone at bus stops, but as soon as I heard that they knew where he was, I was fine.

It’s nice to have a kid who will speak up if something is wrong. Of my three kids, I’m glad it happened to him.

It’s actually kind of funny that Quinn got on a bus and ended up back at the school because that is what happens to him and Jack every day. They spend all this time getting home on the bus only to be scooped up and carted back to the school a half hour after they get home, because Sam’s bus drops him off at Jack and Quinn’s school.

We don’t look at ants there though. There is a playground that we play on sometimes.

 And if it rains, we draw zombies.

I actually kinda really enjoy our afternoon arrangement. I think I mentioned before that the half hour we have before we go get Sam is a perfect time for Jack to play the video games he can earn at school. The other day, he had to finish his homework to earn his video game time, which means Sam saw it happen and he was all kinds of irate. It’s better if he’s just not involved in that at all.

I don’t have any photos of Sam because it is too early in the morning and too late at night to take photos in the dark. I kid…mostly.

Scintillating, I know.

The Bus Stop

My kids’ bus stop has always fascinated me. It’s such an interesting little study of a disparate group of people thrown together on a daily basis. Every year it is different. A big part of me hates the bus stop—mostly just during November and December (and January, February, March, and a third of April)—but I show up there every day nonetheless.

My first year at the bus stop was when Sam was in kindergarten. That year the only people getting kids off the bus were me and a middle schooler who picked up his brother. They then walked over to a metro bus stop and took a regular bus home. I think they had a grandparent living in my school’s area. I made them come over to my house one day when it was raining too hard for me to let them stand at the city bus stop. I fed them cookies and had them wait until it stopped raining so hard before they left.

Every year since then, more and more kids have started taking the bus to and from our stop. I don’t know if more kids are moving into the neighborhood, or they’re consolidating stops, or what, but it’s turned into quite the happening corner in the early afternoon. The bus stop population seems to have peaked last year. We had quite the crowd then.

I was definitely the outsider in that crowd last year though. Most of the parents either spoke only Spanish or were bilingual, so they all chatted in Spanish. Every one would talk and laugh and I would stand sadly to the side, catching every sixth word or so. It was disconcerting. And it made me understand a little better what it must be like to be a Spanish speaker in this country.

This year, one week into the school year, the folks at the bus stop haven’t really gelled yet. There are a couple of old standbys, but everyone kind of spreads out on all the different corners.

Jack’s bus usually arrives first and although technically Jack gets dropped off in front of my house, I have the best bus driver in the world and she will let Jack off wherever I am in the block and a half between my driveway and the bus stop. She’s been Jack’s afternoon bus driver for four years now and I LOVE her.

Yesterday was the first day that she let Jack off at the actual bus stop, which is always entertaining, because it confuses the hell out of everyone else. Why is the bus smaller than usual? Why is only one kid getting off? If her kid just got off the bus, why is she still waiting? Where is my child?!

But there we are. We spread our special education awareness wherever we can.

The Commute

We did have some excitement the other day when Quinn got on the wrong bus, which means that he wasn’t on the bus that stopped at our bus stop. I figured that as long as he didn’t panic and get off at the wrong stop that he would eventually end up back at the school, and he did. He was a little bit put out, but not overly upset. Maybe deep-seated anxiety skips the blonds in our family.

I asked Quinn when he figured out that he was on the wrong bus and he said, “When it didn’t go home.” There you have it. I had a pang of sadness when I realized that all last year, Quinn had Sam to help him figure out where to go, but now he doesn’t.

Also, Jack and Quinn spend a good amount of time navigating their way home from school only to have me scoop them up and drive them back to the school not too much later, which is where Sam’s bus drops him off. But it is working for us.

I can’t tell you how the bus stop is in the morning these days, because we’re not there. And, hoo boy, do I miss it. There is nothing like an hour of commuting in the morning to remind you of how easy it is to walk your kids to the bus stop two minutes away.

Both of my kids’ schools have the exact same 20-minute drop off window in the morning, which is aaaaalmost long enough. As of now, we drop Sam off early, then I drop Jack and Quinn off late. It’s just a couple of minutes on each end, but I’m waiting for the day I get yelled at by both schools. Maybe if I whine loudly and often enough about trying my damnedest, they’ll let me slide.

And that’s the bus stop.