Carpool karma

In the damp January gloom, the stream of children nudging each other through the school’s double doors looked equally dazed and crazed.  The opposite of the uniform guidelines that seemed so stringent in August.  Pony tails askew.  Muddy knees.  Jackets trailing the ground.

I remember that surging feeling of release at the end of the school day.  The unencumbered freedom of the walk home from Mohawk Trails tethered to the steadfast certainty of my mother waiting on the other side of the back door.  Only now do I understand how generously she allowed my rituals to define her days. 

I scanned the mass of navy blue polos for a flash of familiar rocket backpack.  But Jack spotted me first, the lone sedan in the swamp of SUVs.  He waved with both hands, wriggling in a full bodied grin.  How easily he carries the coltish unselfconsciousness of being six.

As I waved in response, I thought of Toni Morrison’s quote about how children always look to see if their parents’ eyes light up when they enter a room.  I strive to be that parent, lit from within by the spark in my mother’s eyes.  Reflecting the glow in my son’s gaze.

“Do you realize how lucky you are to have such a happy boy?” asked the head of the lower school, ducking her head in the door as she helped Jack with his seat belt.

Such unexpected gratitude in the tedium of the everyday.  Carpool could be a daily practice for something much greater, if only I let it.