Getting to School by Bike and Bus

Like many communities in our State, Hermes has no school busing system. Each morning, a convoy of SUVs, Minivans and Sedans invade school campuses to drop off kids. The same happens in the afternoon. For each dollar the State educational system saves not having school buses, parents spend perhaps five to ten dollars on gas, not to mention the time away from their work.

We decided we would break rank from this system and created “Confident Kids Caravan.” Chloe and I went to the homes of each rising fourth and fifth grader in our large, developed neighborhood promoting the idea of biking five minutes to the town’s bus terminal and taking the county bus to and from school each day. Some parents looked at me like I was the most irresponsible parent in the world for wanting my ten-year-old daughter to take the bus. Others thought it was a great idea.
As it turned out, the County bus was so under-utilized by Chloe’s elementary school that the bus schedule had gotten out of sync with the school bell schedule. But upon contacting the bus company, we saw a willingness to take quick action, and the bus schedule will be fully repaired before September is over. We have slowly been building the group of kids biking with Chloe. Chloe and Veronica’s younger brother David make up our core. A boy across the street has joined us. And once the bus schedule is corrected so that the kids are not cutting things too close, we plan to recruit again and expect to find both the excited parents and the horrified parents.

We’ve been fortunate that the same bus route to Chloe’s elementary school also takes Philip to Hermes High School. Philip has been riding his bike with Chloe and David. And the presence of a High School student makes all the parents more agreeable to the idea. Nonetheless, David’s father and I have been trading off the task of riding the bus with the kids and picking up the other at the elementary school.

Getting on the bus put me into the world of Hermes High School. A whole crowd of High School students take the bus regularly. Some of them have formed a small clique of black clothes and skateboards. The one girl in the skateboard clique brings and acoustic guitar to school each day. Once settled, she begins to strum and play some light unplugged music.

Toward the front of the bus, Chloe and David sit in eager anticipation of the school day. Philip sits in the middle of the bus and tries to get just five extra minutes of sleep. And in the back the skateboard clique talk somberly and listen to the guitar. At the stop just ahead of the High School, a man in a wheelchair boards. He says a few kind words to David and Chloe and then unpacks his breakfast of banana bread and cream cheese. He tells me he is going to the local college campus to do his morning weight-lifting which he does five days a week. His arms are perhaps twice the diameter of his legs.

Before we know it, the bus has arrived at the High School and the majority of riders disembark. Some of the High School kids need to remove their bikes from a rack on the front of the bus. Philip disappears into the crowd heading up hill to the campus and the bus engines engage. The man in the wheel chair promises David and Chloe he will pull the cord ahead of the correct bus stop. Until the schedule correction, David and Chloe will need to get off the bus one stop ahead of the official school stop. It involves crossing an intersection, but reduces to walk time in half plus adds the three minutes not spent behind the caravan of non-bus-riders being dropped off at school. David worries he will be late to class, and Chloe asks me to walk with her.

We disembark and our brisk walking outruns the slow-moving caravan. Once we cross the intersection, David runs ahead while Chloe and I gently ascend a pathway onto campus. We arrive comfortably ahead of time. Chloe gives me a big hug and I head down to the parking lot to catch my ride with David’s father.

Tomorrow, the kids ride on their own.

An Unexpected Development

The Saturday before he began his freshman year at Hermes High School, Philip hosted a teen social with the goal of reconnecting with his old friends after two years at Oak Hills Charter School as well as making new ones. He invited roughly twenty guests he knew mostly from Hermes Middles School and gave each invited guest the opportunity to bring one friend along. While most of the guys accepted his invitation, few of the girls came. Jocelyn and four of the other girls invited were spending the weekend in a mountain cabin together and declined his invitation. Veronica and Heidi were the only invited girls who came, but each brought a friend along. There were a total of twelve guys and four girls. Veronica brought another rather earthy friend named Cassidy whose hair went all the way down to her knees. Heidi brought a friend named Layla.

Layla truly stood out. First of all, she was quite tall. Both her parents were Dutch and she had a very slight but noticeable Dutch accent. The other girls seemed to defer to Layla’s leadership regarding whether to jump on the trampoline, enjoy the music, or go inside for the videos and guitar hero games. When two of the guys accidently bumped into one another and one appeared to have hurt the bone above his right eye, Layla led that guy inside and got him an ice pack from our freezer. Among the girls she was the most comfortable socializing with the guys and worked herself among all the guests. When a small group of guys were potentially getting too rowdy, she quickly alerted me to her concern.

Layla also invested time in Chloe who was permitted to take part in the evening’s festivities with her friend Patty. The two tween girls wanted to take Layla upstairs to show Chloe’s room to Layla, but I did not permit them. Still, Layla helped Chloe and Patty enjoy themselves on the trampoline. Then what was probably the critical moment of the evening arrived. There were a handful of teenagers jumping on the trampoline with Chloe and Patty, and someone’s foot half landed onto Chloe’s foot. Chloe sat down and started to cry complaining that her foot hurt. Philip abandoned his circle of guys chatting to get onto the trampoline to comfort Chloe, while Patty went inside to get me. Philip then picked up Chloe, brought her over to me walking on his knees on the trampoline and gently laid Chloe into my arms. Meanwhile, Layla looked on with interest.

How Layla ended up being the last guest at the party is not exactly clear. But as far as I can tell, Layla had originally planned to catch her ride home with Heidi and Heidi’s mother. But Layla instead made separate arrangements to have her own mother pick her up fifteen minutes after the party officially ended at ten-fifteen. As I was cleaning up the last of the party’s debris, Philip, Layla, Chloe and Patty were in a corner chatting amiably and passing my camera around to take silly pictures. Finally Layla’s mother arrived and I brought her inside to collect Layla. “The party is now officially over,” I announced.

Layla looked over to see her mother standing next to me. Layla was silent for a few moments, merely blinking in her mother’s direction. “Could you maybe come back around twelve-thirty?” Layla asked her mother. I offered Layla’s mother a glass of wine to give the kids a little more time to wind down, but Layla’s mother wanted to operate more quickly. Nonetheless, Layla’s mother allowed Layla to introduce Philip and before leaving Layla asked Philip for his mobile phone number. Clearly, the two had enjoyed meeting one another.

The first text message from Layla made Philip's mobile phone vibrate some time before noon on Sunday. Philip and Layla began trading text messages in the afternoon until by evening their replies to one another were almost instantaneous. Perhaps seventy five messages in total were traded. They talked about all the things two teenagers just entering high school might discuss. Layla even confided some private struggles to which Philip responded with supportive words.

Then there was an unexpected development. Layla asked Philip if he had a girlfriend. Philip coyly answered, no. Layla sent him back a text asking him out. And Philip staying coy nonetheless told her yes. And so Philip’s first romance began.

What a Good-Bye Says

The first full week in August was the week both Philip and Chloe went away to overnight camp. They went to two separate camps a short drive from one another. The plan at each camp was a Sunday afternoon drop-off and a Saturday morning pick-up. We spent the bulk of drop-off Sunday packing and finished within an hour of needing to leave. We went through each packing list and I wouldn’t let them pack anything until I’d read it from the list and they held it up so I could check it off as I watched them pack the item in question. We had to go to the store to purchase flashlights, bug spray and single-use cameras. Amelia was conveniently on a girls-weekend-away and the entire parenting responsibility was on my shoulders. We filled the trunk and half the back seat of the car.

Chloe was dropped off first. Her camp had everyone arriving inside the same forty minute window, so we had to endure an ordeal parking and then walking her week’s worth of clothing and supplies to a central registration area. For whatever reason Chloe’s medical information was not on file. So I had to wait in line for ten minutes to deal with the camp authorities to ensure all her paperwork was properly filled out. Amelia who had all the information like the name and number of the primary care physician along with the kids’ medical cards was conveniently out of mobile phone range. But eventually the paperwork was complete to the camp’s satisfaction and we carried Chloe’s week’s worth of luggage to her cabin. We arrived in time to secure the last remaining top bunk. We stayed to put her stuff away, meet her counselor and her cabin-mates and say our good-byes. Normally, Chloe wants a long good-bye, like when I go on an overnight business trip or even spend the day somewhere other than the home office. But now the situation was reversed. She gave her brother a token hug and she gave me the shortest hug I’d received in a very long time before her left hand was on the small of my back guiding me to exit the cabin.

Philip’s camp had a later arrival time. We drove to the tiny downtown on the edge of the woods fifteen minutes from the camp’s entrance. We could tell we were running twenty minutes early. So we parked and walked into the town’s small grocery store and bought two ice creams on a stick. We walked through the little hamlet and mostly just talked. I told him a few stories from my time at overnight camp. We looked at some artwork in one set of windows and some home listings in another window. We managed to enjoy a relaxing twenty-five minutes before heading into the woods to drop him off at Camp.

We endured another parking and registration ordeal but nothing was missing this time. His counselor told us to drop Philip’s stuff off at the cabin and then meet on the same field where registration was taking place. I carried Philips large suitcase. He carried his duffle bag and sleeping bag. His cabin was far up a steep hill. We were the second to arrive in his cabin and Philip chose a top bunk. He chatted briefly with the kid who arrived before him and the two kids who arrived after him. I stood outside the cabin letting him connect with his new cabin-mates. Then he came out and told me he was ready to go back down. I began walking with him and expected to say good-bye at the field, but Philip then began to run ahead of me. I planned to say a quick good-bye to him on the field, but he wasn’t there when I arrived. He must have gone to some favorite spot he knew about from his previous summers at this camp. Either way, I couldn’t find him. The camp gave me a cup of not-for-campers lemonade and I drove off deprived of any more of a good-bye from Philip.

Were the good-byes I received a good thing? I got a brief hug from Chloe and the words “I’m ready to go back down now,” from Philip. Separating from their dad in favor of something fun was not a big deal to either of them. And as a parent who knows there are only so many years left, I know the shorter the good-byes, the more ready they are for adulthood.