My little first born baby is finally ready to enter the next phase of life – Kindergarten!
The sheer volume of questions and paperwork required for a child to start school is mind boggling, but I was prepared. Well, I was prepared for almost all of it. One question really threw me for a loop: Will my child be riding the bus to and from school every day?
It seems like a pretty standard question, I guess, if you grew up riding the school bus. But I didn’t! Not because I was mommy’s special little snowflake (okay, I was, but that’s outside of the bus-riding situation), but my elementary and middle schools didn’t offer bus services even though they weren’t particularly close, and by the time I was in high school, we had established a carpool that kept me from the hour bus ride to my school that was really 10 minutes away. It had never crossed my mind to have my daughter ride the bus instead of me assuming the responsibility for her transportation. Since I stay home with our kids, why wouldn’t I take her to and from school every day?
It never crossed my mind, that is, until I was laughing about the mountain of paperwork with my girlfriend whose son will also be starting kindergarten this fall. She mentioned how excited her son is to ride the bus with all the neighborhood kids, and I froze.
“What? He’s going to ride the bus? Like, both ways, every day?! WITH THE BIG KIDS????”
She just laughed at me.
“Uh yes. It’s fine. He will be fine. Layla would be, too, but it’s fine that you want to drive her.”
I tried to explain to her why I felt so compelled to drive my own child to school. I had loved the way my dad would play a quiz game with spelling words, my mom wanting to hear about what we played on the playground, and the familiar setting of our family minivan. It provided a cozy, quiet comfort in contrast to the noise of school.
I still remember the relief I would feel upon closing the door to the van at the end of the day. Okay, so I might have idealized some of this, wearing rose-colored glasses and whatnot. I’m sure there were days that I would have paid money to have a bit more time before my parents found out that I hadn’t turned in my math homework for weeks, because that definitely happened. But for the most part, it was just a happy memory of growing up.
At this point, my friend pointed out to me that riding the bus was a fond memory for her because it was her time to laugh and talk with her friends, uninterrupted by teachers and school. It was time to wind down between school and home, to relax before thinking about homework. Not to mention, as a parent, you don’t have to put up with the dreaded carpool line, and you gain a few extra minutes to yourself by saying your goodbyes and hellos at the bus stop across the street from our house. …something I hadn’t considered.
Isn’t that the great thing about good friends? They can help you see the common sense in a situation without ever suggesting that you’re being maybe the teensy tiniest bit overprotective. So maybe my little girl will ride the bus, at least in the mornings. After all, I’d hate to deny her the opportunity for laughs with new friends. And if it comes at the price of me not having to change out of my pajamas for an extra hour or so, well, I guess I’ll just have to take the hit on that!
