Breathing room

“Hey can you help me out?” my neighbor asks on the phone. Dreading this question, I grit my teeth. “Can you pick up Sasha from school today?”

Of course I want to help but it’s all I can do not to scream, “No! On principle, I refuse to do pick-up. I don’t believe in treating kids like rock stars, traveling in their own personal limousines. For God’s sake, let her walk!”

Obviously, my principles don’t always apply. It’s sensible not to allow a kid to travel alone on narrow streets, inconsistent sidewalks, or steep hills. During my son’s first school years, it was sweet to accompany him; sometimes we held hands as we walked along and I got to hear about his day. However, we bought our house because it’s five blocks from Gabe’s school on a flat street with adequate crosswalks.

In third grade, when Gabe and a buddy started biking to school every day, I thought, “Yeah! Extra time!” Meanwhile, the majority of kids sit in that long line of cars every day, passively transported to school, traversing a single lane road, passing a high school that emits another daily mass of cars. Has car ownership become a high school requirement?

Granted, inclement weather is an obstacle. When Gabe was 10, we had him use a shuttle bus which stops a block from our house and delivers him directly to school. With only a few other students and elderly passengers, I congratulated myself for supporting the public transportation system and also teaching Gabe such a good life skill.

Until one morning, by some fluke, the bus didn’t stop. We scrambled for an alternative before I was late to work. I thought we were OK. However, my neighbor called later. Driving Sasha to school, she saw Gabe waiting alone. She was concerned. From now on she insisted Gabe ride with them. No problem, she was driving every day anyway.

How could I say no to such a kind, gracious offer, coming with the best of intentions? Especially during recent hailstorms, it’s silly not to accept. But as they drive off, I feel vaguely guilty. Am I neglecting my parental duty? Admittedly, I have zero tolerance for stop-and-go, inch-along traffic, constantly avoiding it. Am I standing up for my principles or being lazy? Am I obligated now to reciprocate, offer to drive her child?

Somehow, I feel hijacked. I don’t want to participate in media-created hysteria about the danger of kids moving independently around communities.

Some of my best childhood memories are of playing in a patch of nearby woods, either with neighborhood kids or alone, building tree forts, stone bridges forging creeks, ice-skating on a pond that surely could have cracked open and drowned us. But we lived with that—even without cell phones to call for help at a moment’s notice. Instead I had time and ‘secret places’ to curl up with a book or journal or play in silly non-productive ways, collecting white clover and weeds to make ‘mud stew.’ Or I simply lay on my back, watching cloud patterns or sunlight filtering through leaves lacing overhead. This open, dreamy time seems so absent from the lives of the children I know today and yet so essential in developing an ‘inner life.’

Later, at 13, my boyfriend and I stole our first kiss under a big, initial-carved tree and the woods provided another kind of shelter for my initiation into my emerging woman’s body. If we don’t give kids a chance to find their ‘sea-legs’ in a world larger than the inside of a car, what will happen when they move away from home? My silence hangs on the phone with my friend. Pick up Sasha, today……

No! Let our kids get wet as they walk, breathe air, notice the sky, marvel at mists and clouds, wind tugging the last leaves off trees, whipping up their hair. I’ll be here—with hot drinks and dry clothes—when they find their way home.