The Further Adventures of Safety Mom

Little Boy on Bus

That’s me, wedging my foot into the bottom rung of the spider man climbing structure while my five-year-old son clambers to the top. The tangle of metal bars and rope is not intended for people over four feet tall. But I am determined to catch him if he falls.

“Slow down! Driveway!” I bellow as Rudy sprints ahead of me down the sidewalk, waving a twig in the air. It was I who petitioned our town to reduce the speed limit and convinced the preschool to elevate its charming but dangerously low picket fence. I always cut grapes in half. I am Safety Mom, and I am on a mission.

“You have to pick your worries,” my husband tells me. But there are so many. It’s hard to choose.

Other mothers roll their eyes and smile gently. They think I’m nuts. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe I’m the sane one.

While they relax on the park bench chatting on their cell phones, I spot the kid about to plunge from the rock wall. I see distracted drivers running stop signs and predators scaling fences. I see broken arms and bleeding heads. Catastrophe unfolds all around me.

Sure, other kids may be allowed to cross the wobbly log over the creek and race their bikes in the street. But my son is alive, and his are limbs intact. Isn’t this enough?

I haven’t always been such a chicken. I grew up jumping curbs on my skateboard and cruising the neighborhood for hours. I hitchhiked around Scotland and sped my bike down the California coast. My husband, whom I met on one such ride, still cries bait and switch, longing for the daredevil he thought he’d married. But when I became a wife and then a mother, I changed. With only myself to care for, I could live recklessly. But now I was in love with two people, one of them very small and distractable. Who else would protect them?

Recently, Rudy’s school announced a field trip to San Francisco. Field trips had never been a problem before – I had driven on each one. This time they had me though. The kids would be driven in buses – across the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I’m not putting him on one of those yellow buses!” I raved to my husband. “And on the highway! They don’t even use seat belts on those things!”

I was swayed to let him go. But not before Rudy himself got wind of my fear.

“I don’t think the field trip will be fun,” he said to me as I tucked him into bed a few nights before.

“Why not?” I asked, feigning nonchalance. “Well, we have to take that dangerous bus,” he began. I tried to play up the little yellow bus as a real treat, an adventure in the city with his friends and teachers. “But there are no seat belts!” he screamed.

The next day, the school tossed me a small bone. I could serve lunch at the field trip. Mollified, I signed up, picturing Rudy in his top-of-the-line car seat, chatting happily as we drove.

“Of course, all of the kids will take the bus,” his teacher eyed me.

“Let me get this right,” my husband stared at me incredulously. You are driving an hour into the city, so you can serve sandwiches?”

I knew that following the bus wouldn’t protect Rudy from calamity. But my Subaru Outback was stuck at the intersection of irrational and afraid to let go.

At the field trip, Rudy took one look at me and burst into tears. “I want to be with my mom!” he wailed to his teacher.
I wanted nothing more myself, of course. I wanted to grab him, flee the wretched field trip and take him out for ice cream. But it was his teacher who held him. Her eyes met mine, kind yet unwavering. She motioned for me to leave. I sulked away, feeling helpless and stupid.

A few hours later, the dreaded little bus pulled up to school and Rudy filed out. I gamely apologized for wrecking his fun and explained that my being on the trip made it harder for both of us. “Mommy didn’t think.” I said.

Then I noticed the red abrasion glistening on his chin and the scrapes on his knees.

“What happened?” I shouted. “Oh, I fell down some stairs.” I gasped, as if I just learned that he’d tumbled 400 feet down the Odessa steps.

“It’s okay mom,” he said with a smile and a roll of the eyes. He hoisted his backpack and struck a pose, one arm extended holding an imaginary laser.

I realized who the real superhero was. I boosted him into his car seat and headed home.