Driving the Chase Car

A mother's story

Sixteen or so years ago, I found myself in an elementary school cafeteria. Kindergarten orientation, they called it. We’d been preparing for weeks. My son and I traced the route beforehand because he’d already shown his love of maps and disdain for surprises. 

“Turn here!” he called on our way there, already having it down. 

The big yellow bus can be a scary place. Our Long Island, NY elementary school’s tradition was to call a day the spring before to show the kids how transportation is done. I took my son's bony hand and told myself to be brave as we entered the concrete building. Someone tried to warm the drab walls by painting an adorably friendly tiger mascot with an oddly menacing undercurrent. A metaphor for Long Island if ever there was one. 

He’d been to preschool, but I’d wormed my way into that teacher’s heart already. She is still one of my closest friends. I wasn’t up to that kind of commitment annually. Besides the occasional daycare, and my husband I was never without my first born. A low, firm voice of reason told me I’d have to let my children interact in ways I couldn’t control. It was only the beginning of the long realization that the moment they walk, they are moving away.

I made myself feel better by remembering there was still one in the hopper. His brother sat next to me, large, blue eyes blinking, none of us knowing what to expect.

The principal, a kind, soft spoken man, told nervous mothers that the kids would be all right. It was just a ride around the corner, he said. I heard what he really meant. This orientation, like dog training, is more about the companion than the animal. Nervously sucking his thumb, mine was anxious to get on board. 

As they read off the names, each rose and headed for the exits, some more gracefully than others. I felt better than the mothers that openly sobbed as they called little Josephina’s name, or the inevitable string of Anthonys. I was only screaming on the inside. 

The fifth graders herded them like sheep toward the proper bus. Tall and sure footed, those children seemed impossibly mature. How would my babies ever fit into such large bodies? 

“Are there directions? They supposed to know where to go?” A woman demanded.

A tired looking other of us said, “That one’s mine.” She pointed to the 10 year olds lined up like soldiers. “They assign each a class. They know what they’re doing.”

We gathered around this old timer like she had magical insight. For the fifteen minute ride she was the hottest ticket in town and answered most of the questions. No one but me seemed surprised that these mostly pertained to the lunch menu. 

As we got back into the car, my son spoke nonstop. Did I know that the brakes hiss? That the seats are plastic? He impressed the bus driver by knowing where to turn right on Woodycrest.

“She said I could be her co-pilot!”

What if he failed Kindergarten? What if I’d ruined him? I have asked myself these questions at every one of these milestones. Either way, the bus doesn’t wait on stragglers. 

When the first day arrived, he was ready. “Are you going to follow it?” a friend of mine asked, gesturing towards the line of cars already amassing to give chase to a school bus for two miles. 

My nose wrinkled in disgust. “Did you?”

Her brows gave a silent but curious, doesn’t everyone? Get a grip, I wanted to yell. Yes, there was that time the bus dropped the kids off at the bottom of a hill in the middle of a Nor'easter and they had to “lord of the flies” it on up. And of course, bullying is a thing. I steadied myself. Despite what the press would have you believe, 99.99% of those riding a bus made it back home safely. In hindsight, anyway. 

My little one and I stood on the corner as the kids swarmed. So many of them had experience. These second and third graders knew the drill. Mine hung back, an observer by nature. He’d made me hug him before we left so he wouldn’t have to worry about me, he said. 

Phones, cameras, grandparents, pets all waited that first day. The older kids heard the bus round the entrance to the community—a dog whistle only they could hear.

“I’ll be okay, Mommy,” mine told me and touched my hand as the bus air braked into its spot with an elongated release. The other kids rushed it. “I know how to get there.”

“You’ll be great,” I smiled.

My son’s empty backpack was larger than his torso. The bus driver introduced herself and assured me he’d be fine. I regretted all the times I cursed her from the driver’s seat when I got stuck behind her while chatty parents gummed up traffic. Like I was. I stepped back.

She pulled the lever and closed the bus door, swallowing the children like a giant yellow whale. Mine didn’t even bother to look out the window.

“Come on,” I said, scooping up my three-year-old as it pulled away. I opened the garage door and popped him into the carseat. If I was quick enough I would catch up three stops ahead.

By the time we reached the moon shaped drive where they unloaded the kids, I was near the top of the pack and couldn’t spot him. If not for the excited cheers of schoolmates coming back together, if not for the laughter and promise of firsts all around, I would have happily snatched him back. Instead, I watched him enter into his story. I prayed for a good one.

Saturday morning I will watch him cross a campus hundreds of miles distant from his tiny elementary school and receive his hard earned diploma. It has been a long road since that first bus run—a step I doubt he remembers but keeps whispering to me this week. As he rides the bus into this next, unknowable abyss, one of a promising adulthood and inevitable disappointment, I hope if I stay discreet enough, he won’t mind if I chase at a respectable distance.

A wonderful mother’s day to us all!