Public Transport With Kids!

Chicago Bus Stop, 6:45am

I think springtime in Chicago has my number, something made painfully clear to me recently as my kids and I suffered a bout of CPT (Chicago Public Transport). 

Our car was in the shop for 2 weeks, thus signaling the arctic front that did descend on our dear city this May. Without wheels, the trek to school required my two children, (a 2½-year-old girl and 5½-year-old boy), and I to grapple with frigid May mornings at sunrise on tortoiselike buses. 

By now, you’ve guessed which type of city dweller I am. It’s just that it’s easier with a car, (I whine.)

The CTA “adventure” is even more fun with children! Adding to the trial of herding small people with the attention span of a doorbell – yes, “ding-dong” –  our morning joy was enhanced by the glacial airstream characterizing Chicago lately, which blew both the freezing rain and our own little trio horizontally in the opposite direction we were attempting to travel. 

Eventually, we’d arrive at our stop – just in time to wave to a departing bus – because we’d had to stop to gather sticks and rocks. Or wait for everyone to push the “walk” button a half dozen times (they’re young, so I indulge their belief that the shiny silver nubs are attached to something operational). Or to drop my daughter’s ‘lovey’ in the middle of the crosswalk and then retrieve it while bracing for the impact of an approaching text-messenger-slash-operator-of-a-motor-vehicle (you know who you are). 

Once at the bus stop, my youngest usually goes about the business of gathering whatever she can from the underside of anything she is able to reach. If it looks edible (old gum, a straw, a stray hub cap), she will put it in her mouth. My son is generally busy scaling the bus shelter. 

On one particularly frigid day, our bus approached and, though I’d known it would arrive eventually, I could not stop the flood of gratitude coursing through my veins. I announced that our bus was coming, and my children looked at me with less interest than they’d give to spinach and continued about their business. 

Chicago may consider itself a child-friendly city. But nobody has informed the bus drivers. Not that my daughter gives a sh$t if they’re having a bad bloody day. She’s going to climb aboard by herself if it takes 20 minutes to do it. Heh. On this day, I watched the bus driver twitch and spasm, knowing that any attempt to accelerate the boarding process would only slow us down, or bring us to a complete screamy halt.

As it was, we were barely past the closing doors when the driver jerked us into traffic. Regardless of the fact that our still-open Dora the Explorer umbrella threatened to peel the hair pieces off all the ‘priority’ riders and scour the eyeballs from the faces of everyone else. 

Hey! We paid our $2.25, we want the whole glorious experience! Weee, you’re bald!

While my son headed determinedly to the back of the bus and the furthest seats from our exit/salvation, I attempted to steer my daughter toward anything that was solidly attached – a handrail, a stroller, a passenger with her own hair – that we could grab onto if necessary. 

Usually, an extremely naïve woman will vacate her seat so that my smallest child might travel safely. The kind lady is likely to be well into her hundreds. As she slowly unfolds her creaking self to stand up, I feel guilty for a nano-second and then peel my daughter from the hand-rail. She will scream as I try to sit her down before she begins to thrash about and look genuinely ungrateful for the elderly woman’s sacrifice. There will be more screaming, writhing, wailing and finally, a fitful squirming in my lap.

There was, of course, such a woman on this bus, and we both stared slack-jawed at my now furious toddler. I, because I could not understand why sitting down on a moving bus should cause such distress, and the old woman simply because she was having a stroke. 

Meanwhile, my son wanted to pull the STOP cord to make it ‘ding.’ Our ride was peppered, no, slathered with, “Mommy, now? Now? Mommy now? Mommy, Mommy, can I pull it now?” Annoying only to me. 

All the other mothers – those with babies who couldn’t yet talk; who’d calmed their hysterical children several stops earlier; who’d already delivered their kids to the saints who care for them during the day – they were smirking, they were taking a rare moment to be all smug, to judge and rate my momminess, and that’s okay. I knew I’d be doing the same on my way home.

Once settled, my children observe. “Mommy that man’s hat is on backward.” “Mommy, why does that lady bring her dog on the bus?” “Mommy, she’s sleeping, mommy, mommy, look she’s sleeping!” “How come we’re not GOING?” 

And me, “WHAT do you have in your mouth?!”

We were about four stops away from our destination. “Mommy are we there yet, are we there now, now? Now?… can I pull the string now?” – when a woman approached with candy bars and a sales pitch “… a dollar for a single mom?”

Wait, but, I am a single m…“Mommy I want candy,” “Me too!” “Mommy can we? Can we have that candy?” 

At which point I was hating this woman even more than the Ice Cream Man and the Girl Scouts.

I groped about my Grand Canyon-with-shoulder-straps for a bill to no avail. Irritatingly, I managed to come up with four quarters, which she saw and which I was then obliged to give to the single mother. 

She asked me if I wanted candy. Well, I glared at her thinking, “I will be torn limb from limb by my own offspring if you don’t give it to me right this second, so YES, I want the damned candy.” 

“Please.” I asked.

Chocolate-covered peanut butter administered, there it was. Silence. I loved this woman! Okay, not enough to give her my number when she asked, “Maybe we should get together, I mean we are both in the same boat.” And I thought ‘yes, but mine floats…’ and told her, ‘I don’t have a phone. Of any kind.’ 

I am such a coward.

She said, “Oh,” and then began to really open up. Though I’d attempted cold indifference, I was the only person, aside from my children, not attached to an MP3 player of some sort and she was not about to toss this rare opportunity. 

While my children were happily devouring Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, I was entreated to the details of this single mom’s sex life. Some man, intoxicated, wanted to spend the night and she said no. At first. 

I was polite. I am always polite. I tried not to judge and failed. I thought, “This woman is just possibly nuts. Bonkers. Missing a hinge or seven.” And not because she let a man spend the night. 

She saw my book; it had the word “divorce” in the title.

“Are you getting a divorce?” she intruded. 

“I’m really afraid,” she said. “I’m used to depending on him. Now, he won’t let me see my son.”

“How do you do it?” she asked. And for the life of me, I could not have given even one spider-leg of advice. I don’t know how I do it. How I will continue doing it. 

Having finished their morning chocolate orgy, gooey and with their clingy little chocolate fingers clutching my Grand Canyon (with-a-shoulder-strap) and my clothing, my kids resumed their rotating mantras: “Are we there yet,” “Can I pull the cord now?” “Can we have more candy, Mommy please?” 

Nearly delirious, knowing that I could terminate this odd conversation with my “fellow” single mom without being rude, I announced that ours was the next stop.

What if she gets off at the same one? What if she wants to walk with us to the school? Where is she going anyway? Certainly not to the job interview she mentioned – she’s wearing a baseball cap! 

“This is our stop, Megan,” I said and got the kids up, all of us holding hands, bracing for the bus to brake. She said “Call me,” as if we’d known each other for years. 

“Mkay,” I winced. And we walked away.

My son and I:

“Who was that?”

A friend.

“I’ve never seen her before.”

She lives far away.

“How come she gave us candy?”

Because she’s a nice person.

“Are you going to call her?”

Maybe.

“You should call her. I’m going to draw her a picture. Will she be on the bus tomorrow?” 

I don’t know.

“Call her. She has a number, I heard her say. I think she wants to talk to you, Mommy. She’s your friend. I’ll give her my picture tomorrow.”

I have not called, (I can’t can I, after telling her I don’t have a phone?) but I continue to think about this woman who is, like me, a single mother. From completely different worlds, we share fear. We suffer paralyzing trepidation about our responsibilities as mothers, uncertainty as to our future, the future of our children. We wonder whether or not we’ll be lucky enough to always hold their hands on the way to the bus stop. We ride the same bus.

We’ll probably see her again. The Chicago ‘summer’ is imminent (we pay taxes, we are owed a summer), and though my car is fixed, I’m experiencing a touch of nostalgia for our morning bus treks to school.

We were getting quite good at the whole enterprise, and when I asked the kids which did they like better, our car or the bus, they both said, “bus.” So I’ve decreed that one day a week we’ll take the bus to school. I will let them play chase around the bus shelter, press the ‘walk’ button, carry their umbrellas, and I will hold their hands whenever they let me.

When I see Megan again, I will talk to her. We may not be in the same boat, but riding the same bus counts for something.