Car Time

This post has been floating around in my mind a lot lately. I've started it and reworked it and it never seems to leave my brain in the way in which I have wanted it to. Therefore, I say c'est la vie and am just going to post it and however it ends up, it ends up.

The Pipsqueak is in vision therapy (of which I'll post more later). Anyway, we do the drive thing once a week. It's about 45 minutes one way, so we are in the car with each other for a big expanse of time each week.

As much as I find myself not wanting to drive each week in the late afternoon, I am blessed for these drives. It is in the car where my Pipsqueak opens up and tells me about her day, how she is really feeling about things, and what's going on in her life.

Yes, she's only 7 and let's face it, there isn't much in her life that I don't know about. However, she is at school 7 hours 5 days a week. I'm not there then. I don't know when a friend hurts her feelings, or she feels proud for getting the math question right. I don't know if she's laughing with her friends, at her friends, or if they are laughing at her. I don't know any of her school life unless she tells me.

She tells me in the car. I hear about the insecurities of computer lab, the love of P.E., and how much confidence her wonderful teacher has given her this year. I learn about the newest playground games, the boys who 'like' her... eghads, she's only 7! I learn that her principal is becoming much more handsome in his attempts to grow a beard this semester, that her teacher's father is my daughter's newest crush (he comes to help out in the class sometimes), and that having a brown skinned student teacher meant more to her than I can possibly know as a white woman.

As much as I look forward to the end of VT, I will miss this time in the car. The "Mommy & Pipsqueak" time as she calls it. I will miss having her solely to myself with no outside influences. No phones ringing, no dinner to be cooked, no grandparents to voice their opinions, no dog that needs attention.

Just us. Mommy & Pipsqueak. What a wonderful gift I've been given. I'm just glad I was smart enough to enjoy it while it's lasted.