The Big Schlep

It’s not possible to explain to a non-parent how much of a parent’s life involves schlepping your beloved children somewhere. Our entire week’s schedule is dictated by ballet classes, and what I do while I’m waiting is dictated by the time of the class, how long it lasts, and the weather. If I’ve got an hour and a half or two hours, there’s usually time to sneak in a bike ride, though the good routes from downtown Albany are very limited (and don’t include Fuller Road, the narrow, busy, potholed danger of which is only accentuated by the ghost bike that has appeared there recently &ndash and yet there’s no other way to get from the Western/Washington part of the world to the Albany-Shaker Road part of the world). I’ve been wanting to take one of the canoes down of an evening before the sun gets any more shy, and missed a beautiful chance last night, when the water was calm and the sun warm. Other times, I park at the riverfront and read a book, which works until it gets too cold or dark. Then I’ll end up parking myself inside the ballet school &ndash the absolute last resort, because the conversations of the ballet moms make concentration on a text (or, indeed, rational thought) impossible.

And that’s just the routine. There are the special events, too, back and forth to the library, the high school, and, currently, the roller rink, where ALL the teens decided to go tonight, and which is way too far away for me to bother going back home while she gets up to whatever teens these days get up to. (I take extreme pleasure from embarrassing her, Frances McDormand in “Almost Famous”-style, by reminding her loudly, “Don’t take drugs!”) Therefore, this post is live from the Panera, where the wi-fi is free and my decaf I didn’t really want anyway is getting cold.

So it occurs to me that my mother and father did this schlepping, too &ndash and lots of it. I probably needed a ride across the river three or four times a week (it’s really not an accident I set up my adult life to echo my childhood, with a river to cross; I missed being near rivers when I lived in Syracuse) &ndash this or that Explorers meeting, some sort of study session at the city library (which nearly always devolved into a rambling shopping expedition to the Two Guys Department Store across the street). As teens, we were vastly more self-propelled than my kids are &ndash just the nature of the towns we live in &ndash but there was still a vast amount of schlepping. So I think I owe someone a thank you, because you need to be schlepped to be a successful teen &ndash friend’s houses, dances, roller rinks, bowling alleys, wherever it is that teens suddenly decide they have to be. So, thanks for the schlep, Mom.

Yeah, like my mom has a computer. Hopefully it’s the thought that counts.