With the time I spend shuttling the kids around to various activities after school and on the weekends, I’d like to think of my car as my mobile command center. But if you saw the state of my car, you would quickly realize that it is far from the gleaming portable headquarters I’d like to imagine.
Kids and cars are an unappealing mix. Add in food and you have an unpleasantly potent combination. When the kids were smaller,sticky fingers left trails of sludge on windows. Goldfish and Cheez-It crumbs,granola bar rubble, and melting gummy snacks caked the seats and floors, while spilled drinks provided a cloying background odor that no amount of scrubbing could quite eradicate.
No matter how many times I’ve tried to limit snacking in the car over the years, it just never seems to pan out. With older kids, sometimes munching a banana or cereal bar on the fly is the only way to cram in a snack before a game that’s scheduled conveniently over the dinner hour. And where do the discarded peels and wrappers end up when we jump out of the car to rush for the field?
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Snacking isn’t the only vehicular headache I face these days. Forget the distractions the kids manage to provide when shouting requests at the Dunkin' Donuts drive-through. There’s also the fighting that erupts regularly from the backseat (usually when I’m trying to navigate through bad traffic or listen to the directions issuing with maddening calm from my GPS). Arguments over control of the radio are frequent, and inevitably, someone winds up unhappy.
Sometimes I close my eyes and remember back to the days before I had kids, when I was fully in charge of the radio and my car was an oasis of calm on my way to work or errands. That sense of peace may be a distant memory, but I know that I’ll regain control of my ride one day when the kids leave home and go off to find their places in the world. And I can’t help but realize that a big part of me will miss the voices from the backseat and even those smeary fingerprints on my windows. These days any trip in the car makes me need a little time to myself to unwind—hope my Boston area babysitter is available.
