Forty thousand minutes.
After years of wondering (and kvetching), I finally did it: I added up the number of hours I’ve spent schlepping my kids around in carpool.
First, let’s define our terms. To me, the word “carpool” means that the passengers in the vehicle could have arrived in more than one car. By that definition, carting around my own two children does not count as carpooling. Just as well, because I’m not sure I want to add up THAT number. No, for the purposes of this column, carpooling means that someone else’s kids are in the car with mine and that someone else’s parents are getting a break from chauffeuring, however short it might be.
Back to the math. School breaks and summer downtime accounts for about six weeks, which means that the other 46 weeks of the year, they’re heading off to school or day camp — both of which mean they’re squeezing into the back of someone’s car, hoping that they’re not stuck with the middle seat. Estimating conservatively, I’d say that I’m driving, on average, two shifts of carpool a week. In my case, each shift is about 45 minutes of driving. And that reality began about ten years ago.
The grand total is more than 40,000 minutes as carpool chauffeur.
That’s 40,000 minutes of kid music, which has morphed over the years from Raffi to Taylor Swift to Childish Gambino. It’s 40,000 minutes of “I sat in the middle last time.” It’s at least 10,000 requests to stop for ice cream, and — because I am a sucker — probably 5,000 ice cream cones.
Excuse me — I just had to stop and add it up again. Forty thousand minutes? That number seems unbelievable when I see it written down. The weird thing is, though, when I’m behind the wheel, it feels about right. Strapping on my seatbelt and turning the key in the ignition is something I do so often, it feels like breathing. After putting meals on the table, loading the dishwasher, and hanging up errant jackets, schlepping my children is the parenting task that I’ve repeated the most.
And here’s the kicker: I’m going to miss it.
I know this is true because I’m already missing it. When Lila, my older daughter, got her driver’s license, she wasn’t the only one who felt a heady rush of freedom. I did, too. Now she could not only drive herself places but drive her sister around as well! There’s only one catch: When they can drive, they drive away. I barely see Lila anymore, and she hasn’t even moved out yet. Here’s a little more math: When you add up how late she sleeps in the morning with how late she comes home at night, plus her after-school job and her social life, I saw Lila for approximately .5 hours this past weekend. Do you think I’m making that up? I promise you I’m not. On Sunday, given how her schedule conflicted with mine, I saw her for zero hours.
Which brings me back to the hours of carpooling. When we’re all in the car together, even if we’re rushing and stressed and complaining, we’re still all together. When my kids are pushing to listen to their music rather than mine, they’re sharing their music with me. When they’re bickering with their peers over seating arrangements or timing or who said what during lunch, they’re offering me a glimpse into their world, a world that is ever farther away from mine. There was once a time when I knew what happened every second of their day because I spent all of those seconds with them. Now, the vast majority of those seconds are spent apart. But when I’m driving that carpool, that’s 2,700 seconds of guaranteed, concentrated kid time.
More math: In approximately 5,000 more hours, my younger daughter, Stella, will likely have her own driver’s license. And with that, my carpooling shifts will come to an abrupt, whiplashing stop. With them will go some of our best opportunities for mother-teenager conversations. There’s something about sitting in close proximity, eyes straight ahead on the road, that allows for kids to open up. Even kids who are no longer that interested in talking to their moms will, sometimes, find themselves spilling details about their lives that would otherwise go unspoken. And even if they don’t, even if those drives are simply stretches of companionable silence, once they can drive themselves — even those moments of silent togetherness will be in the rearview mirror.
Forty thousand minutes.
Naomi Shulman’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Yankee Magazine, as well as on NEPR and WBUR. Follow her on Twitter: @naomishulman.