Adylaed

Now, here is a math problem I never had to learn in school:

You have three children. Sophie is two, Peter is four, Lena is six. You live in a historic neighborhood halfway up a hill. (That historic part would be the bit they throw in to see if you can determine what information is important and what isn’t.) At the top of the hill, you turn left to go to Sophie’s home daycare, about a mile from your house, or right to Peter’s preschool, the same distance away. Lena’s elementary school is just past Sophie’s daycare. To get out of the neighborhood to the main road, you can take the road between Sophie’s daycare and Lena’s elementary school, or continue past Peter’s preschool. Peter can be dropped off any time after seven-forty-five A.M., Sophie after eight-thirty, and Lena’s bus comes between eight-thirty and eight-forty.

Given the above facts, in what order does the mom need to drop off each child, and at what time, to leave her neighborhood by eight-thirty A.M.?

You don’t think about these things before you have children.

This is my normal morning routine:

I get up at five-fifty and hurry up and shower and stretch and have a sip of tea on the porch and write a hundred words, then start the breakfast and put the lunch boxes on the counter, because (until the morning of the math problem) I was a firm believer in making them help pack their lunches.

On a good day, all three kids sleep til seven and I do all of these things. (If the idea of kids sleeping til seven sounds like a sick joke to you, you should read the book, The Happy Sleeper, by Heather Turgeon.) On a not-as-good day, someone pops awake at six-fifteen, and I don’t. We eat breakfast and make lunches and brush the teeth and get the socks and shoes on and stuff arms and heads and hands into coats and hats and mittens and scramble out the door at eight-twenty, and then have a few minutes to run around outside and for them to play in the giant rhodedendron before running up the hill to our neighbors’ to get Lena on the bus. (God, it was so much easier when it was warm.)

I texted Sophie’s home daycare and asked if we could do Wednesdays and Thursdays instead of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and if I could drop her off at eight-thirty instead of ten-of-nine like usual. Then I emailed Peter’s preschool and asked if he could stay for Lunch Bunch on Wednesdays and Thursdays instead of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and if I could drop him off at eight-fifteen instead of nine. That way I would drop off Peter at preschool, then go back the other way and drop off Sophie at her daycare, then go back past Peter’s preschool again and head to the meeting, because Sophie couldn’t be dropped off before eight-thirty and Peter could be dropped off anytime from seven-forty-five on. Both said yes, and I was very pleased with myself that I had worked this out, and was feeling so lucky and grateful that we have such kind childcare providers and homey environments only a mile from our house.

Then the night before the next meeting, I remembered about Lena’s bus.

The bus came anywhere between eight-thirty and eight-forty. Eight-forty would be too late, and even if it came right at eight-thirty that would mean I'd have to somehow get Sophie and Lena in two different places at once.

I texted our neighbor up the hill and asked if I could drop her off at eight-fifteen to catch the bus with her crew, but she has four kids and they all do sports, so I figured it was unlikely I would get a response in time. (I was right.) I texted a parent I’d met at a birthday party and asked how parent drop-off works, and if we dropped off early did we need to sign up in advance, and she said to just pull around by the swings, but she didn’t know about early drop-off, because she was always late.

So the plan was if I didn’t hear back from Lauren up the hill, I’d just have to drop off Peter at preschool, then pull up to Lena’s school early hoping they’d take her, then go back the other direction and drop off Sophie right at eight-thirty and zoom off to the meeting, and if I had to wait to drop off Lena I’d just be a little late. The issue was these meet-ups were once a week, and I needed a real solution here. But one day at a time.

I thought about getting up earlier to prepare everything, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of that, because between Sophie getting her molars and once in a while a nightmare from one of the other two and my husband’s damn alarm clock our cat, I hadn’t been having full nights of sleep. I skipped the stretching and the writing and instead made the lunches, and thankfully it was a good day and they slept til seven, and I did breakfast and halfway through putting the extra oatmeal in the fridge I realized I could ask our other neighbor, down the hill, if Lena could catch the bus with her son and I could drop her off there at eight-fifteen. She responded, “Of course!”

Filled with a fresh burst of adrenyline and warm and fuzzy neighborhood feelings, I got all the teeth brushed and got on all three kiddos stuffed into the coats and hats and mittens, which only took about fifteen minutes instead of like forty because thank God Lena’s now old enough to get on most of Sophie’s gear on most of Sophie, and packed all three of them into the car and we zoomed down the hill to drop off Lena at Debbie’s house and then turned back up the hill to drop Peter at preschool and then turned back the other way to drop off Sophie at her home daycare, which I somehow got to early and had to stall getting Sophie out of the car.
Then I got back in the car to head to the meeting.

A choir Christmas song was playing. I passed the cranberry bog, which was a deep red-purple.

It felt, not just sounded, very quiet.

The meeting was great.

Jessica