Jump in, or we’ll be late!” Three girls fling in their school backpacks and we zoom off to another school. Two girls leap out, calling for their brother. The toddler, strapped in her car seat, keeps repeating “Whacka Bamba,” which is the hard-to-pronounce name of some fellow she keeps hearing about on the car radio.
Three children climb into the minivan, reach for bagels, and we head for the highway. A few minutes and much asphalt later, we pause to drop the second-youngest girl at her art class.
The rest of us return home, where a neighborhood girl is waiting to play. At hyper-speed, I saute vegetables, load a rice cooker, sear chicken and pop into the oven two unbaked loaves that I assembled in the morning, conscious all the time of a dozen approaching deadlines.
“Don’t forget your homework!” I call regularly, like a lighthouse beam that swoops around and catches ships in its glare before fading off again.
“In a minute,” the ships signal back.
The fragrance of baking bread is rising pleasantly from the oven, as the third-oldest girl puts on her leotard. Then comes a fraught moment of handing the toddler to the boy and neighborhood girl before dashing out to drop ballerina-girl at her class, streaking to the art facility to fetch art-girl and racing home again to …
Argh! As I pull into the driveway, hag-ridden by yet more looming deadlines, I remember the bread. By the time I get to the oven, the loaves are rich golden and perfect — and as hard as theatrical props.
It strikes me that the baguettes look the part of edible bread, just as this absurdly scheduled afternoon is what for thousands of Washington-area families looks like … normalcy.
Why would normal people live like this? Sorry, no time to answer! Having fed as many children as I can find, I sprint out with the two youngest to collect the ballerina while the neighbor girl’s mother is picking up my two eldest to take them to the martial arts studio from which I and the youngest three will fetch them, including the neighbor’s daughter, after ballet. And we do: Crawling through thick commuter traffic there and back, dropping the girl at home, and pulling into our own driveway just after 8 p.m. — an hour after the toddler’s bedtime.
The funny thing is, ours isn’t even a particularly busy family. I know some women who dance this wild fandango every night. Around and around, week after frenetic week.
The Buddhists have their Wheel of Existence; for innumerable middle- and upper-middle-class families, it’s the Wheel of the Minivan and we’re martyrs strapped to it.
Every so often, someone writes an article (ahem) about the phenomenon of psycho-scheduling, and over coffee mothers ask each other if they’ve read it and tsk-tsk about those awful Type A parents who feed children dinner in the car so they can get some kid to a game — it’s insane, everyone agrees — before fetching their own children, pitching granola bars into the back seat and speeding off to get some kid to some game.
Other people are overscheduled, you see. Why, my child only has ballet on Monday, gymnastics on Tuesday, swimming on Wednesday, pottery on Thursday, language tutoring and soccer on the weekend, and, obviously, homework five nights a week.
Recently I overheard three mothers chatting in hot competitive mode outside an Arlington studio where their daughters were dancing:
“… yes, it’s a Mad Science camp, because really, we want to supplement what she’sgetting at school —”
“… we’re going to lacrosse after this, gosh, they’re running late —”
“… swimming, and I told her, ‘you said you wanted to be on the team, so you have to stick it out, and I told you’ —”
These women spoke with a smug, suppressed glee suggestive of eager participation in the removal of any useless idle time from their children — or themselves.
But even families that try to live quietly find themselves constantly sucked toward the maelstrom of after-school activism — even as they embrace slow-foodism, outdoor play and a generally Amish approach to life.
“I’ve tried so hard to keep us from being an activity family,” laments one D.C. mother, “and we still have four trips to Bethesda every Sunday.”
In one family I know, it took a father’s heart attack to bring everyone to a halt. Yet no sooner did he begin to recover than each child resumed one, then two activities. And the great wheel began turning again.
Examiner columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner column appears on Thursdays.
