In my day I had to walk five miles in the snow up hill both ways to school…

When Doug and I announced to the boys they were going to take the bus to school, they were thrilled. They have never taken the bus to school. The excitement fizzled when they realized they had to walk from the house down to the paved road to reach the bus stop and then up the hill at the end of the day.

Liam announced, “It is simply too far to walk.”

Colin said, “I won’t remember where to go.”

We countered Liam’s objection by calling Auntie Allison. She went over to Ojai and walked our childhood route. Which, like this one, was downhill to the bus and uphill home. Then I walked the boys’ route. The two routes took roughly the same amount of time. If Auntie Allison and I could do it, so could Colin and Liam. Allison also told the boys that she had to make it to and from the bus stop on crutches. I can remember watching Allison hobble up the hill after school with crutches and her big pack. I don’t remember taking her pack for her. I guess I was not that thoughtful of a big sister. Allison seemed to be on crutches for long stretches of elementary school. Maybe that’s where her incredibly strong arms developed?

To solve Colin’s objection we had several practice walks to the bus stop then home again. The route would be simple if I let them walk down the road through the station, but I won’t. The road from our house to the bus stop is a narrow, windy, slightly wider than one-lane dirt and gravel track. Cars, and especially trucks, come around the corners too fast. Instead, I have found connecting back tracks through the bush and sheep paddocks to reach the bus stop. After several round trips both boys were still reluctant about having to walk to the bus stop, but at least they were confident they could find their way.

For now Doug and/or I walk with the boys. Jolie needs the exercise; anyhow, I usually walk every morning. Two trips a day should help her drop the quarantine bulge and it can't hurt me while the weather's nice.

After the first day on the bus Liam was indignant with the inefficiency of the bus route. Liam explained how bus leaves the primary school and does a loop that reaches about half way to our house and then returns to town to pick up the high school students. With the high school students and remaining primary kids it does the same route again and then continues further out of town past our house. Liam says he wasted 30 minutes having to return to town for the big kids. We explained that if we drive the boys, we use gas, a round trip takes us 40 minutes, and we have to do two round trips a day. So either Liam has to waste time 30 minutes or we waste one hour and twenty minutes plus gas. Liam finally conceded, “True. It’s the best for most people, just not for me.”

To break up the walk each day we pass through our neighbors’ driveway and check to see if the chickens have laid any eggs. Now Liam and Colin want chickens. After the early morning wake-ups in Greece and Turkey, Doug has banned roosters and burros. We’ll see about the chickens. We suggested that the boys offer to take care of our neighbor’s chickens for a while.

The little kids sit at the front and high school kids take the rear of the bus. Because we are near the end of the line, there are only a handful of kids when Liam and Colin board the bus. As the bus pulled away Doug and I both noticed in the last row a morose, goth-looking teenager dressed in all black. His/Her hair was bleached blonde with a patch dyed turquoise. We cracked up. We could have been looking at one of our classmates a generation ago. Being a morose teenager looked so tiring, almost unbearable.