I needed to pick up my daughter from Alma's house and I was nervous. Alma is my idol. I'd been worshipping her at the bus stop for months, but since we'd always swapped kids at the corner, I had yet to step into her house. According to Bus Stop Mommy lore, Alma designed and decorated her house herself, right down to sewing the curtains, reupholstering the furniture and hand-dipping the candles.
She's the only mom at the bus stop who had a Valentine's gift for the bus driver. It was a gold Godiva box wrapped in a real fabric ribbon, tied in a large red bow. Tucked under the bow was a hand-addressed envelope that didn't have “Your postage helps feed a hungry child” scratched off first.
That was the morning I offered to put her youngest child on the bus while Alma drove her other daughter to school early. In her impeccably clean car. Wearing ironed, matching clothes and makeup.
There I stood in my reindeer pajamas and parka, holding the bus driver's gift, when the other moms circled around, coffee cups trembling.
“Hey Rinehart, what's the big idea making the rest of us look bad? I thought we had a pact.”
“It's not mine!” I yelped. “It's Alma's. Her daughter's too shy to hand it to the driver so I agreed to do it.”
“Well then, who's got a pen? Let's add our names to it.”
Alma's the one who always has her roots touched up on time. She wears lipstick to the bus stop when the rest of us wear yesterday's mascara. On our cheeks. I've never seen her nail polish chipped. She knows all the good scoop from school and has the common sense and logic to decipher the facts from the folly.
She's simultaneously finishing her Master's degree, running the Girl Scout cookie campaign and church charities. She delivers her kids on time to soccer practice, clarinet and horseback riding lessons, then cooks them meals with more than two colors. All this on four or five hours of sleep each night. I know, because I'll get an e-mail from her time-stamped “12:39a.m.” with the next one marked, “5:42a.m.” And they're coherent.
I felt the overwhelming need to clean my house before I walked over to hers but I snapped out of it, dug my lipstick out of a crevice in the minivan and headed over.
The smell of dinner wafted through the air. We relaxed in her gorgeous living room where Alma actually rested her feet on the white ottoman. “Coffee?” I gazed across the foyer. There was a plant with three dead leaves. The dining room table looked as if it hadn't seen the light of day since last Easter. The candles were leaning and every stair had a pile on it. The whines of bickering girls echoed over the banister. “I'd love some.”
And I love that woman.
Karen Rinehart is a magazine humor columnist, public speaker and the creator of The Bus Stop Mommies, a newspaper. You can read more of her work at karenrinehart.net. Karen lives in Concord, North Carolina with her two kids, one husband and goofball dog, where they attend St. James Catholic Church. (Well, they leave the dog at home.) She enjoys hearing from readers across the states and as far away as Australia, Japan and England.
Karen's book, Invisible Underwear, Bus Stop Mommies and Other Things True to Life, is now available at a discount for preordering.
