Bus stop

I didn't intend to be at the bus stop at all this morning. I had told Mr. C that if I was still showering, he should walk up himself. I don't think he heard me say that his lunch was in front of the door. He actually had to walk over it to get out.

When I realized he had not taken his cheese and grapes, I dashed out in my car, with roughly 3 minutes to spare. Watching him run for the bus with the other local kids, I had a moment of envy -- for their gossip, their homework assignments, their boundaried concerns.

So much is still possible for a ten year old or a 13 year old. Decades older, we know how much we can't control. But I didn't ponder myself into a blue funk. I turned around the car in the street and went home -- to find that somehow one of our cats had seemingly pushed the lock on our screen door -- and now smugly slept on my son's bed or the couch, while I pulled and poked and finally snuck in through the back door. Fooled him, I thought -- sometimes I can still beat the cats at their own game. But not all the time. Particularly when I don't know how to play.