"Oh, Jane, you know what an idiot Stan is about car pools."

"Stan runs a whole bank! He's just convinced you he's too stupid to figure out how to drive the kids so you won't ask him to help," Jane said. "It's selective idiocy. Steve used to do the same thing."

There was some more sniffling and whining at the other end. Jane sympathized. Her own late husband Steve, who had died in a car accident a year and a half earlier, had been just as discriminately parental.

Jane hung up on the other mother and screamed up the stairs, "Katie! Hurry up!"

"I'm doing my hair!" came back the indignant reply.

"You better get a move on. I've got to take you early so I can get Todd's gang picked up."

As Jane rounded up kids, helped hunt for lost math homework, and emptied her purse for lunch money, she reflected on how shortsighted she'd been to allow her children to be spaced out in such a way that they attended three different schools. Why couldn't she have just had triplets and been done with it? Everybody would have done everything at the same time— started school, lost baby teeth, gotten hormones. There would have been brief periods of absolute hell] but they'd have never been repeated with the next kid.

It was a bright sunny day out when she headed toward school with Katie, and the early morning light was catching the tops of trees just starting to show hints of vivid fall coloration. "Oh, look at that one!" Jane said, pointing toward an especially gorgeous scarlet ivy climbing a chimney. ' ''

"Don't turn this way!" Katie shrieked.

"Why not? It's the way to school," Jane asked.

"Mom, Jenny lives on this street!"

"Of course she does." Jenny was Katie's best friend.

Katie was scrunching down in the seat, squealing protests. "She'll see me! Why couldn't you go some other way?"