Leland illustrates a trend and in the process crafts an entertaining story. Linda O’Neal is a schedule-driven chauffeur mom who says she loves the way she lives her life. Leland raises questions.
We enjoyed her portrayal of O’Neal’s kids, particularly the scene in which Riley first spots his sister from the car. And we admired the section titled “A breeze across the lake,” in which Leland, via O’Neal’s ex-husband, poses the question: What would these kids be doing if they weren’t being driven to dance and karate lessons? She paints a scene of carefree days with the other kids in their neighborhood. But, she writes, in that neighborhood, “There are no children in sight.” They’re also out on the road, being carted around.
We readers may see ourselves in O’Neal, in which case we’re likely to enjoy the glimpse of ourselves—and perhaps see ourselves more clearly. Or if we do not “relate,” we may be appalled—and better informed. Either way the story is an innovative, entertaining and substantive reflection on American life.
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A mother sits trapped at a traffic light, long, red fingernails drumming the steering wheel, tap, tap, tap, seconds ticking away.
In the back of her 1999 Ford Explorer are dance clothes and a Chick-fil-A salad for her 11-year-old daughter, Filipino martial-arts sticks for her 9-year-old son and a 2-gallon Rubbermaid box with pencils, markers, paper, envelopes, tape.
Everything is in place, ready to go. If only the light would turn green.
The clock on the dashboard says 2:07, time to get in line with the other moms and dads picking up children from school and shuttling them on to the next activity. Three days a week, she drives as many as 100 miles and up to 3 1/2 hours a day, taking her son and daughter to karate and dance. From Charlotte to Fort Mill to Matthews, back to Charlotte, to Fort Mill, to Matthews, to Tega Cay. She pulls into her driveway on Lake Wylie, in the dark, with two exhausted kids, at 9:15.
Linda Hoverman O'Neal is chauffeur mom. It is the way more and more of us live in a hurried world. She organizes every detail of their afternoons, anticipating roadblocks and mood swings, trying to make the few hours she's with her children every day—in the car—as stress-free as possible. She is a model of efficiency.
While some families are fed up and trying to simplify their lives, she is as busy as ever. Does she share any of their ambivalence? Any guilt over how structured her children's lives have become? Any regrets they don't have more time to play?
Sticking to a system
The light changes and Linda turns left out of Arboretum Office Park onto N.C. 51. Right onto Interstate 485, sticking to the speed limit, for 10 miles.
"Last year, I put 39,700 miles on this car."
Left on Interstate 77 and past the "Welcome to South Carolina" sign.
"When my friends hear about this, they say, 'Oh, my God, have you lost your mind?' "
Right on S.C. 160.
"It's not as stressful as people think."
Left into the driveway of Gold Hill Elementary in Fort Mill.
"We have a system and we don't deviate from the system."
She pulls up near the front of the school. The mileage counter reads 236. The clock on the dashboard 2:33. Twenty-three miles, 26 minutes. When she bought the SUV in 1998, she set the clock seven minutes fast—a cushion for when she's running late. Today she's got four minutes to spare before school lets out because it's really 2:26.
Tap, tap, tap go the fingernails.
Preparing to be a great mom
Linda is 44 and now, instead of striving to be the best real estate agent in town, she wants to be the best mom.
She spent years preparing for this stage in her life. She married in her late 20s and had children in her early 30s, just as she dreamed she would. By her 40th birthday, Linda wanted to be settled, financially and professionally.
Her mother was 40 when Linda's dad died, and didn't even know how to write a check. Watching her struggle made Linda more determined to take charge of life.
After she and her first husband, Steve Hoverman, moved from Los Angeles to Tega Cay in 1994, Linda devoted 10-hour days and most weekends to RE/MAX Metro Realty.
She enrolled Taylor, then 3, and Riley, 1, in day care. Steve, a mortgage banker, watched them most weekends. Steve didn't like being a single dad on Saturdays and Sundays, but there was no stopping Linda.
She was preparing for the day when Taylor and Riley would need a chauffeur. Now they do, and she can delegate work or put it off. Taylor takes 14 hours of dance each week and Riley takes 10 1/2 hours of karate and chess—more when there are weekend competitions. A closing on a house sale is the only thing Linda allows to interfere with her children's schedules.
"The name of the game is excellent organization and time management," she says. "This leaves little room for error or stress. My life is very, very full, but relatively stress-free. I try to be a good role model for moms that choose to have careers and still be a great parent."
'I have a test tomorrow'
Riley rocks on his feet at the edge of the sidewalk, waiting for his mother. A black hooded sweatshirt shrouds his face, but Linda easily spots him in the crowd of students. He flashes a smile and climbs into the back, slinging his book bag across the seat.
"Hey, bright eyes! How was school, babe?"
"Good. I have a test tomorrow."
"In what?"
"Science."
"Ohhhh." She cradles her head in her hands. They'll have to go over science questions now, again at night on the way to pick up Taylor from dance, again in the morning on the way to school.
"It's super easy," he assures her.
When Taylor asked to take competitive dance four years ago and Riley began working toward his first black belt in karate, Linda made a deal: As long as they made good grades, they could take karate and dance. School comes first, she told them. If you don't finish your homework, no karate, no dance.
Riley is working on his third black belt; Taylor won a spot this summer in dance camp.
'Look in the box'
Linda pulls out of the carpool line and slips into a parking space. She cuts the engine and rolls down the windows.
"There's no such thing as a super-easy science test, bud," she tells Riley. Linda majored in pre-veterinary science and microbiology at California State Polytechnic University. "Let me look at your folder real quick and see what you've got here."
"Can I do my other homework first?"
"OK."
Riley's desk for the next hour is the back seat of the Ford Explorer.
"I don't have a pencil," he says.
"Look in the box in the back."
No excuses. The green Rubbermaid box contains a smaller plastic box with pencils, scissors, scotch tape; another box with markers and colored pencils; a folder with lined paper; a white towel for spills; envelopes for notes to teachers or lunch money; Taylor's math workbook; Band-Aids.
Since her divorce in 1999, most of the driving has fallen to Linda. Steve, her ex, helps out on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights and whenever she needs him. He's her contingency plan. Linda remarried in September 2001, but her new husband, David O'Neal, is a lieutenant colonel in the Army and has been gone all but six weeks since then. He's in Kuwait.
Linda is looking forward not only to David's return, but also to his retirement in 18 months. He's promised her he'll become "Driving Dad."
5:30, 7:25, 8:10 a.m.
Riley grabs a pencil from the box and starts work on his math problems. Linda fills out a registration form for that weekend's dance competition.
She prides herself on time management. Weekday mornings, the alarm wakes her at 5:30. She makes a pot of dark-roasted Colombian coffee and drinks two cups with sugar and lots of cream while she answers e-mails, unloads the dishwasher and puts away laundry. She does 20 minutes of high-impact aerobics and toning exercises, showers, then wakes Taylor and Riley. Rice Krispies for Taylor; Waffle Crisps for Riley.
They leave home by 7:25. She drops them off at school and arrives at work about 8:10.
Linda doesn't often have time for what she calls frivolous stuff, like lunch with friends. She eats at her desk.
'I want a doggy'
Riley moans from the back seat. "I'm hungry."
The only snack in the car is a half-ounce packet of Azar unsalted sunflower seeds for Taylor's salad.
"No. Definitely, no," Riley squeals. He'd rather wait an hour until he can buy something from the snack machine at karate than eat unsalted sunflower seeds.
Riley keeps up a running monologue from the back seat, as if he's doing play-by-play on his homework. "Aaaaah. 10. 20. 30. 40. 50. 60. Gosh. It's the fifth time I've done this one. OK. 1, 2, 10, 20, 30 . Aaaaah. It was 72, not 73."
Riley finishes the last math problem.
"I want a doggy," he says.
"A what?" Linda asks.
"A doggy."
"Oh, come on. We've already had this discussion. I can't take on one more thing."
It's 3 o'clock. Linda backs her SUV out of the parking space and pulls in behind five other cars in the Gold Hill Middle School carpool line. Time for a science quiz.
Riley stretches out on the floor.
"What are two types of soil?"
Riley jumps up and bends backward over his seat.
"Clay and loam."
"Good."
He shoots forward and dangles from the back of his mother's seat.
"What can we add to make soil better for plants?"
He sidles toward the door until he's balanced against it.
"Fertilizer."
"Right."
He lies back down on the floor.
Linda's cell phone hasn't rung once since she picked up Riley. The day before, she worked on the phone for most of her hour with him. She talked with an appraiser, a tax assessor, four builders and someone in the register of deeds office, gathering figures about home sales in a neighborhood. No matter how often Riley pestered her, Linda kept working. An appraisal had come in low on a house. Without those numbers, the contract would fall through.
She sacrifices for her children. They've got to sacrifice for her.
What matters most
One morning, Gene Fisher, Linda's boss, stopped her to ask about David, her husband. Linda is too composed to show it, but she's nervous. She has no control over what happens to David in the war with Iraq. Linda likes to be in control. She runs her life the way her mother, Betty Ligon, ran their home in Smyrna, S.C. Even the towels had to be folded to Betty's specifications.
After talking with her boss that morning, Linda thought about what matters most in life. For her, it's family. Taylor. Riley. David. Her mother, brother, sister. She thought about the family she had lost: Her father, dead at 49 of a brain tumor; her first child, dead at birth from skeletal dysplasia; her brother, shot in a robbery while on vacation.
Each death gave her a glimpse of her own mortality.
She missed out on time with Taylor and Riley when she was off selling houses every weekend. She missed out on time with her first husband when they both worked so hard, pumping up their careers, that they neglected their marriage.
Linda doesn't want to miss out anymore.
'Time to get your sister'
At 3:30 p.m., the bell rings at Gold Hill Middle School. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
"OK," she tells Riley. "Time to get your sister."
"IN—VA—SION!" Riley screams and plops back upright onto the seat. "Where is she at?'
"Here she comes."
Walking toward the car is a petite girl with blond hair pinned on top of her head. She's dressed like any other student, in jeans and a sweatshirt, but she glides across the sidewalk with a dancer's grace, feet skimming the concrete, back straight, head high.
Anyone who knew Linda when she was growing up would know that Taylor is her daughter. She's got her mother's tiny features, her big smile, her stubborn streak. Taylor is as driven as Linda.
"Hello, Muff." Linda greets Taylor and then pulls out of the carpool line. "How'd your costume work out?"
"It worked."
"Was it worth freaking out over this morning?"
Taylor turns to Riley: "Get buckled."
"How much homework?" Linda asks. "Scale of 1 to 10?"
"Not a lot."
They're back on S.C. 160, headed to karate, a couple of miles away. Taylor opens her assignment book. She has straight A's and wants to keep them. No time to dawdle.
She's supposed to dance from 4:45 to 8, longer on other nights, but if she hasn't finished her homework, she has to skip a class. Taylor rarely has to skip a class.
Values for life
One afternoon, Linda saw one of Taylor's classmates walking along Gold Hill Road. An 11-year-old girl walking unchaperoned along a four-lane highway. Where, Linda wondered, did her parents think she was? Surely they didn't know.
Linda knows where Taylor and Riley are. Always.
Some girls Taylor's age just want to shop or hang out with boys. When Linda was a student at Blacksburg High in Cherokee County, S.C., one of her friends became so infatuated with a boy, all she did was hang out with him. Linda was school president, student council rep, varsity cheerleader, Junior Miss and Future Farmers of America sweetheart.
Her friend got pregnant at 16. Linda graduated first in her class.
Better to be at karate and dance than somewhere else.
Linda first signed up Taylor for dance when she was 3, but Taylor didn't like it. That's it for dance, Linda assumed. But at 5, Taylor asked to dance again. Even on weekends, when there's no competition, she will end up in the bonus room, practicing in front of the mirrors. Her best friends are the girls on her dance team.
It took several tries for Riley to find something he liked. Baseball? Not again. Soccer? He hated it. When he asked to take karate, Linda thought for sure he'd drop out of that, too.
Linda doesn't expect them to stick with dance and karate forever—Taylor has announced she wants to be a surgeon or a dentist. Linda is willing to indulge their passions now because she believes they're learning values that will stay with them for life.
Self-confidence. Commitment. Teamwork.
Her advice to them is to be humble winners and gracious losers.
'I'll see you at 7:15'
She pulls into the parking lot at Robert Briggs School of Martial Arts in an office park on S.C. 160 and her voice rises to a question mark. "Briggs? I don't see his car yet. That's not good."
Riley grabs his karate gear. Taylor picks out a pink highlighter from the box in the back and marks everything she's got to do on the 26-mile drive to Weir Dancin' in Matthews. Linda writes a lunch-money check.
Minutes tick away.
3:40. 3:41. 3:42.
Tap, tap, tap.
At 3:46, Robert Briggs pulls up. Linda turns the key in the ignition. No sense wasting time. A traffic jam might be lying in wait.
"Riley, I'll see you at 7:15," she says, leaning out of the car window. "Love you, bud."
"Can I have some money?"
It's been an hour since he announced he was hungry.
She fishes a dollar out of her pocket.
"That'll have to do."
Riley runs off.
"OK. One down."
A breeze across the lake
Steve, her ex, wonders sometimes what it would be like if Taylor and Riley went home after school and hung out with the neighborhood kids.
That's how he grew up in Covina, Calif. In the afternoons, he joined all the other boys and girls spilling out of houses. They shot pool in Steve's garage and baskets at the park, rode bikes and played hide and seek. At 5 o'clock, his mom would yell from the front door: "Dinner's ready!"
What if Taylor and Riley quit dance and karate and went home? In the afternoon, in their neighborhood, the wind whispers through pine trees and whips up white caps on Lake Wylie. A cardinal breaks the stillness, singing "What-cheer. What-cheer. What-cheer." At the end of one driveway, a skateboard awaits.
There are no children in sight. The only person out front of any of the houses is a construction worker, talking on a cell phone.
On weekday afternoons, Linda's neighbors are strapped in their cars, too. Kate Lanvik-Larsen is driving Tanner and Chris to Charlotte Soccer Club, a 45-minute drive if traffic is heavy, and traffic is often heavy. The Pettengills are headed to guitar and soccer and dance. The Brelands took the winter off from organized sports—the kids got tired of going, going, going—but now they're back to soccer and T-ball and piano.
This could be most anywhere, any street, any weekday, in Charlotte or Tega Cay or Gastonia.
We spend more time in our cars, a national study says, than we do caring for our children.
It is the way we live.
4 1/2 years, 130,000 miles
Linda squeezes back onto S.C. 160 between a Dodge pickup going east and a school bus driving west. Taylor finishes math and starts social studies.
Every few miles, mother and daughter exchange snippets of news.
"Mom, I got another 99 in computer today."
"Oh, I'll take that! It's all that IM experience. "
A minute passes.
"What did you guys have for lunch today?"
"Pizza bread."
For Linda, hours in the car aren't wasted. It's her time with Taylor and Riley.
A real estate agent once asked why she didn't hire a nanny. Linda is not about to hire someone to drive her children around. Maybe it's the close quarters, but Taylor and Riley talk about stuff they wouldn't talk about at home. They share secrets.
"Uh-oh."
Brake lights flash on cars up front. Traffic slows near the exit ramp to Carolina Place Mall. A wreck? Linda brakes. Just as quickly, the cars ahead speed up. False alarm. It's a car abandoned in the median. Linda pushes on, past Ballantyne Corporate Park, past Johnston Road, the Ballantyne Resort golf course, Providence Road, McKee Woods, Langston.
In 4 1/2 years, Linda has driven 130,000 miles and spent thousands of hours in her Ford Explorer. The average woman spends more than an hour a day in her car, nearly 17 days out of every year. By those same calculations, Linda spends 51 days out of every year in her car.
Call her "Chauffeur Mom," says a report by the Surface Transportation Policy Project.
Friday is 'do nothing' night
From the back seat comes the hiss of a soda can being opened. Taylor has finished homework and sips a Sprite.
"Mom, can I eat right now and play the flute after class?"
"Yeah."
Most afternoons, Taylor practices her flute driving down the highway. Today, she's hungry.
"Ooooh. You got extra croutons."
"Extra croutons. Extra sunflower seeds. Extra dressing."
Linda rarely sits down to dinner with Taylor and Riley. Except on weekends. Unless there's a dance competition or a karate tournament, weekends are for family. Friday is "do nothing" night: pizza, popcorn, movies in bed. Linda is amazed at how little they get done. No lists. No goals. No demands. They are so happy to be out of the car for a change that they enjoy just being home.
Without glancing away from the road, Linda rips open the packet of Ranch dressing with her teeth, reaches back with her right hand and offers it to Taylor. Weir Dancin' is up ahead on the left.
"It's 4:15 and we're here with half an hour to spare!"
In the front hall of the dance studio, Linda checks the bulletin board. She is team mom and it's her job to help the girls change costumes between performances. There's a competition in Greenville, S.C., that weekend and one in Spartanburg the next. More hours in the car.
"Got it," she says and kisses Taylor goodbye.
4:35, 6:30, 9 p.m.
Twelve minutes later, Linda pulls into the parking lot at Arboretum Office Park on Providence Road. It's 4:35 p.m.
Her red lipstick is still fresh, no chips in her matching nail polish. Her short, red hair is neatly styled. She strides into the RE/MAX Metro building, a professional on the run, dressed in a crisp navy blue pantsuit and red shirt, blue and white heels, pearl earrings trimmed in gold. Tucked into her canvas briefcase are the children's schedules, clients' files and a copy of Bob Woodward's "Bush at War."
Linda is ready for anything.
She looks as pressed as she did when she walked into the office that morning. No one would guess she had spent the last 2 1/2 hours chauffeuring Taylor and Riley from school to karate to dance, from Charlotte to Fort Mill to Matthews, then back to Charlotte.
There's a Chick-fil-A salad waiting in the refrigerator, phone calls and e-mails to answer. She works until 6:30.
Then it's 25 miles back to Fort Mill. Pick up Riley. Stop at Subway to buy him a ham sandwich with lettuce, pickles and black olives. Home for an hour and a half. Riley showers and brushes his teeth. Back in the car with him at 9 to meet her ex-husband at the Exxon on Gold Hill Road. Wednesdays and Thursdays, Steve brings Taylor there from dance, cutting out 52 miles for Linda and Riley.
They park side by side, and it's a quick transfer: Taylor, her book bag, her dance bag.
Bye, Dad, I love you.
Hi, Mom.
Back at home, Taylor showers and brushes her teeth.
Lights out at 9:45.
'Can I just be a kid?'
Linda didn't grow up rushing around town, snacking on fast food. Few of us grew up that way. She sat down to supper every night with her mother, her father, her sister and two brothers. Every night, no exceptions, just like on TV. Her dad was in the military, and they moved from Maine to Texas to Newfoundland to North Carolina before he retired to Smyrna, but no matter where they lived, they gathered at the dinner table.
"Oh, I'd love to do that," Linda admits, "and we do do it—on weekends. We more than make up for anything we've lost on the weekdays. It's about compromise. This is what Taylor and Riley want to do. None of it's about me. I don't believe a parent should direct a kid. It's got to be their passion. If they told me tomorrow, 'I'm tired of dance,' 'I'm tired of karate,' 'Can I just be a kid?' I'd say, 'Sure.' But they won't do that. They love what they're doing.
"And I love it! I wouldn't change a thing."
5:30, two cups, 7:25
The alarm rings at 5:30 in the morning, waking Linda from a sound sleep. It's dark outside. She makes a pot of coffee and drinks two cups while she answers e-mails, unloads the dishwasher and puts away laundry. She works out for 20 minutes, showers, then wakes Taylor and Riley.
At 7:25, they're back in the car again.
A mother sits trapped at a traffic light, long, red fingernails drumming the steering wheel, tap, tap, tap, seconds ticking away.
In the back of her 1999 Ford Explorer are dance clothes and a Chick-fil-A salad for her 11-year-old daughter, Filipino martial-arts sticks for her 9-year-old son and a 2-gallon Rubbermaid box with pencils, markers, paper, envelopes, tape.
Everything is in place, ready to go. If only the light would turn green.
The clock on the dashboard says 2:07, time to get in line with the other moms and dads picking up children from school and shuttling them on to the next activity. Three days a week, she drives as many as 100 miles and up to 3 1/2 hours a day, taking her son and daughter to karate and dance. From Charlotte to Fort Mill to Matthews, back to Charlotte, to Fort Mill, to Matthews, to Tega Cay. She pulls into her driveway on Lake Wylie, in the dark, with two exhausted kids, at 9:15.
Linda Hoverman O'Neal is chauffeur mom. It is the way more and more of us live in a hurried world. She organizes every detail of their afternoons, anticipating roadblocks and mood swings, trying to make the few hours she's with her children every day—in the car—as stress-free as possible. She is a model of efficiency.
While some families are fed up and trying to simplify their lives, she is as busy as ever. Does she share any of their ambivalence? Any guilt over how structured her children's lives have become? Any regrets they don't have more time to play?
Sticking to a system
The light changes and Linda turns left out of Arboretum Office Park onto N.C. 51. Right onto Interstate 485, sticking to the speed limit, for 10 miles.
"Last year, I put 39,700 miles on this car."
Left on Interstate 77 and past the "Welcome to South Carolina" sign.
"When my friends hear about this, they say, 'Oh, my God, have you lost your mind?' "
Right on S.C. 160.
"It's not as stressful as people think."
Left into the driveway of Gold Hill Elementary in Fort Mill.
"We have a system and we don't deviate from the system."
She pulls up near the front of the school. The mileage counter reads 236. The clock on the dashboard 2:33. Twenty-three miles, 26 minutes. When she bought the SUV in 1998, she set the clock seven minutes fast—a cushion for when she's running late. Today she's got four minutes to spare before school lets out because it's really 2:26.
Tap, tap, tap go the fingernails.
Preparing to be a great mom
Linda is 44 and now, instead of striving to be the best real estate agent in town, she wants to be the best mom.
She spent years preparing for this stage in her life. She married in her late 20s and had children in her early 30s, just as she dreamed she would. By her 40th birthday, Linda wanted to be settled, financially and professionally.
Her mother was 40 when Linda's dad died, and didn't even know how to write a check. Watching her struggle made Linda more determined to take charge of life.
After she and her first husband, Steve Hoverman, moved from Los Angeles to Tega Cay in 1994, Linda devoted 10-hour days and most weekends to RE/MAX Metro Realty.
She enrolled Taylor, then 3, and Riley, 1, in day care. Steve, a mortgage banker, watched them most weekends. Steve didn't like being a single dad on Saturdays and Sundays, but there was no stopping Linda.
She was preparing for the day when Taylor and Riley would need a chauffeur. Now they do, and she can delegate work or put it off. Taylor takes 14 hours of dance each week and Riley takes 10 1/2 hours of karate and chess—more when there are weekend competitions. A closing on a house sale is the only thing Linda allows to interfere with her children's schedules.
"The name of the game is excellent organization and time management," she says. "This leaves little room for error or stress. My life is very, very full, but relatively stress-free. I try to be a good role model for moms that choose to have careers and still be a great parent."
'I have a test tomorrow'
Riley rocks on his feet at the edge of the sidewalk, waiting for his mother. A black hooded sweatshirt shrouds his face, but Linda easily spots him in the crowd of students. He flashes a smile and climbs into the back, slinging his book bag across the seat.
"Hey, bright eyes! How was school, babe?"
"Good. I have a test tomorrow."
"In what?"
"Science."
"Ohhhh." She cradles her head in her hands. They'll have to go over science questions now, again at night on the way to pick up Taylor from dance, again in the morning on the way to school.
"It's super easy," he assures her.
When Taylor asked to take competitive dance four years ago and Riley began working toward his first black belt in karate, Linda made a deal: As long as they made good grades, they could take karate and dance. School comes first, she told them. If you don't finish your homework, no karate, no dance.
Riley is working on his third black belt; Taylor won a spot this summer in dance camp.
'Look in the box'
Linda pulls out of the carpool line and slips into a parking space. She cuts the engine and rolls down the windows.
"There's no such thing as a super-easy science test, bud," she tells Riley. Linda majored in pre-veterinary science and microbiology at California State Polytechnic University. "Let me look at your folder real quick and see what you've got here."
"Can I do my other homework first?"
"OK."
Riley's desk for the next hour is the back seat of the Ford Explorer.
"I don't have a pencil," he says.
"Look in the box in the back."
No excuses. The green Rubbermaid box contains a smaller plastic box with pencils, scissors, scotch tape; another box with markers and colored pencils; a folder with lined paper; a white towel for spills; envelopes for notes to teachers or lunch money; Taylor's math workbook; Band-Aids.
Since her divorce in 1999, most of the driving has fallen to Linda. Steve, her ex, helps out on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights and whenever she needs him. He's her contingency plan. Linda remarried in September 2001, but her new husband, David O'Neal, is a lieutenant colonel in the Army and has been gone all but six weeks since then. He's in Kuwait.
Linda is looking forward not only to David's return, but also to his retirement in 18 months. He's promised her he'll become "Driving Dad."
5:30, 7:25, 8:10 a.m.
Riley grabs a pencil from the box and starts work on his math problems. Linda fills out a registration form for that weekend's dance competition.
She prides herself on time management. Weekday mornings, the alarm wakes her at 5:30. She makes a pot of dark-roasted Colombian coffee and drinks two cups with sugar and lots of cream while she answers e-mails, unloads the dishwasher and puts away laundry. She does 20 minutes of high-impact aerobics and toning exercises, showers, then wakes Taylor and Riley. Rice Krispies for Taylor; Waffle Crisps for Riley.
They leave home by 7:25. She drops them off at school and arrives at work about 8:10.
Linda doesn't often have time for what she calls frivolous stuff, like lunch with friends. She eats at her desk.
'I want a doggy'
Riley moans from the back seat. "I'm hungry."
The only snack in the car is a half-ounce packet of Azar unsalted sunflower seeds for Taylor's salad.
"No. Definitely, no," Riley squeals. He'd rather wait an hour until he can buy something from the snack machine at karate than eat unsalted sunflower seeds.
Riley keeps up a running monologue from the back seat, as if he's doing play-by-play on his homework. "Aaaaah. 10. 20. 30. 40. 50. 60. Gosh. It's the fifth time I've done this one. OK. 1, 2, 10, 20, 30 . Aaaaah. It was 72, not 73."
Riley finishes the last math problem.
"I want a doggy," he says.
"A what?" Linda asks.
"A doggy."
"Oh, come on. We've already had this discussion. I can't take on one more thing."
It's 3 o'clock. Linda backs her SUV out of the parking space and pulls in behind five other cars in the Gold Hill Middle School carpool line. Time for a science quiz.
Riley stretches out on the floor.
"What are two types of soil?"
Riley jumps up and bends backward over his seat.
"Clay and loam."
"Good."
He shoots forward and dangles from the back of his mother's seat.
"What can we add to make soil better for plants?"
He sidles toward the door until he's balanced against it.
"Fertilizer."
"Right."
He lies back down on the floor.
Linda's cell phone hasn't rung once since she picked up Riley. The day before, she worked on the phone for most of her hour with him. She talked with an appraiser, a tax assessor, four builders and someone in the register of deeds office, gathering figures about home sales in a neighborhood. No matter how often Riley pestered her, Linda kept working. An appraisal had come in low on a house. Without those numbers, the contract would fall through.
She sacrifices for her children. They've got to sacrifice for her.
What matters most
One morning, Gene Fisher, Linda's boss, stopped her to ask about David, her husband. Linda is too composed to show it, but she's nervous. She has no control over what happens to David in the war with Iraq. Linda likes to be in control. She runs her life the way her mother, Betty Ligon, ran their home in Smyrna, S.C. Even the towels had to be folded to Betty's specifications.
After talking with her boss that morning, Linda thought about what matters most in life. For her, it's family. Taylor. Riley. David. Her mother, brother, sister. She thought about the family she had lost: Her father, dead at 49 of a brain tumor; her first child, dead at birth from skeletal dysplasia; her brother, shot in a robbery while on vacation.
Each death gave her a glimpse of her own mortality.
She missed out on time with Taylor and Riley when she was off selling houses every weekend. She missed out on time with her first husband when they both worked so hard, pumping up their careers, that they neglected their marriage.
Linda doesn't want to miss out anymore.
'Time to get your sister'
At 3:30 p.m., the bell rings at Gold Hill Middle School. Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
"OK," she tells Riley. "Time to get your sister."
"IN—VA—SION!" Riley screams and plops back upright onto the seat. "Where is she at?'
"Here she comes."
Walking toward the car is a petite girl with blond hair pinned on top of her head. She's dressed like any other student, in jeans and a sweatshirt, but she glides across the sidewalk with a dancer's grace, feet skimming the concrete, back straight, head high.
Anyone who knew Linda when she was growing up would know that Taylor is her daughter. She's got her mother's tiny features, her big smile, her stubborn streak. Taylor is as driven as Linda.
"Hello, Muff." Linda greets Taylor and then pulls out of the carpool line. "How'd your costume work out?"
"It worked."
"Was it worth freaking out over this morning?"
Taylor turns to Riley: "Get buckled."
"How much homework?" Linda asks. "Scale of 1 to 10?"
"Not a lot."
They're back on S.C. 160, headed to karate, a couple of miles away. Taylor opens her assignment book. She has straight A's and wants to keep them. No time to dawdle.
She's supposed to dance from 4:45 to 8, longer on other nights, but if she hasn't finished her homework, she has to skip a class. Taylor rarely has to skip a class.
Values for life
One afternoon, Linda saw one of Taylor's classmates walking along Gold Hill Road. An 11-year-old girl walking unchaperoned along a four-lane highway. Where, Linda wondered, did her parents think she was? Surely they didn't know.
Linda knows where Taylor and Riley are. Always.
Some girls Taylor's age just want to shop or hang out with boys. When Linda was a student at Blacksburg High in Cherokee County, S.C., one of her friends became so infatuated with a boy, all she did was hang out with him. Linda was school president, student council rep, varsity cheerleader, Junior Miss and Future Farmers of America sweetheart.
Her friend got pregnant at 16. Linda graduated first in her class.
Better to be at karate and dance than somewhere else.
Linda first signed up Taylor for dance when she was 3, but Taylor didn't like it. That's it for dance, Linda assumed. But at 5, Taylor asked to dance again. Even on weekends, when there's no competition, she will end up in the bonus room, practicing in front of the mirrors. Her best friends are the girls on her dance team.
It took several tries for Riley to find something he liked. Baseball? Not again. Soccer? He hated it. When he asked to take karate, Linda thought for sure he'd drop out of that, too.
Linda doesn't expect them to stick with dance and karate forever—Taylor has announced she wants to be a surgeon or a dentist. Linda is willing to indulge their passions now because she believes they're learning values that will stay with them for life.
Self-confidence. Commitment. Teamwork.
Her advice to them is to be humble winners and gracious losers.
'I'll see you at 7:15'
She pulls into the parking lot at Robert Briggs School of Martial Arts in an office park on S.C. 160 and her voice rises to a question mark. "Briggs? I don't see his car yet. That's not good."
Riley grabs his karate gear. Taylor picks out a pink highlighter from the box in the back and marks everything she's got to do on the 26-mile drive to Weir Dancin' in Matthews. Linda writes a lunch-money check.
Minutes tick away.
3:40. 3:41. 3:42.
Tap, tap, tap.
At 3:46, Robert Briggs pulls up. Linda turns the key in the ignition. No sense wasting time. A traffic jam might be lying in wait.
"Riley, I'll see you at 7:15," she says, leaning out of the car window. "Love you, bud."
"Can I have some money?"
It's been an hour since he announced he was hungry.
She fishes a dollar out of her pocket.
"That'll have to do."
Riley runs off.
"OK. One down."
A breeze across the lake
Steve, her ex, wonders sometimes what it would be like if Taylor and Riley went home after school and hung out with the neighborhood kids.
That's how he grew up in Covina, Calif. In the afternoons, he joined all the other boys and girls spilling out of houses. They shot pool in Steve's garage and baskets at the park, rode bikes and played hide and seek. At 5 o'clock, his mom would yell from the front door: "Dinner's ready!"
What if Taylor and Riley quit dance and karate and went home? In the afternoon, in their neighborhood, the wind whispers through pine trees and whips up white caps on Lake Wylie. A cardinal breaks the stillness, singing "What-cheer. What-cheer. What-cheer." At the end of one driveway, a skateboard awaits.
There are no children in sight. The only person out front of any of the houses is a construction worker, talking on a cell phone.
On weekday afternoons, Linda's neighbors are strapped in their cars, too. Kate Lanvik-Larsen is driving Tanner and Chris to Charlotte Soccer Club, a 45-minute drive if traffic is heavy, and traffic is often heavy. The Pettengills are headed to guitar and soccer and dance. The Brelands took the winter off from organized sports—the kids got tired of going, going, going—but now they're back to soccer and T-ball and piano.
This could be most anywhere, any street, any weekday, in Charlotte or Tega Cay or Gastonia.
We spend more time in our cars, a national study says, than we do caring for our children.
It is the way we live.
4 1/2 years, 130,000 miles
Linda squeezes back onto S.C. 160 between a Dodge pickup going east and a school bus driving west. Taylor finishes math and starts social studies.
Every few miles, mother and daughter exchange snippets of news.
"Mom, I got another 99 in computer today."
"Oh, I'll take that! It's all that IM experience. "
A minute passes.
"What did you guys have for lunch today?"
"Pizza bread."
For Linda, hours in the car aren't wasted. It's her time with Taylor and Riley.
A real estate agent once asked why she didn't hire a nanny. Linda is not about to hire someone to drive her children around. Maybe it's the close quarters, but Taylor and Riley talk about stuff they wouldn't talk about at home. They share secrets.
"Uh-oh."
Brake lights flash on cars up front. Traffic slows near the exit ramp to Carolina Place Mall. A wreck? Linda brakes. Just as quickly, the cars ahead speed up. False alarm. It's a car abandoned in the median. Linda pushes on, past Ballantyne Corporate Park, past Johnston Road, the Ballantyne Resort golf course, Providence Road, McKee Woods, Langston.
In 4 1/2 years, Linda has driven 130,000 miles and spent thousands of hours in her Ford Explorer. The average woman spends more than an hour a day in her car, nearly 17 days out of every year. By those same calculations, Linda spends 51 days out of every year in her car.
Call her "Chauffeur Mom," says a report by the Surface Transportation Policy Project.
Friday is 'do nothing' night
From the back seat comes the hiss of a soda can being opened. Taylor has finished homework and sips a Sprite.
"Mom, can I eat right now and play the flute after class?"
"Yeah."
Most afternoons, Taylor practices her flute driving down the highway. Today, she's hungry.
"Ooooh. You got extra croutons."
"Extra croutons. Extra sunflower seeds. Extra dressing."
Linda rarely sits down to dinner with Taylor and Riley. Except on weekends. Unless there's a dance competition or a karate tournament, weekends are for family. Friday is "do nothing" night: pizza, popcorn, movies in bed. Linda is amazed at how little they get done. No lists. No goals. No demands. They are so happy to be out of the car for a change that they enjoy just being home.
Without glancing away from the road, Linda rips open the packet of Ranch dressing with her teeth, reaches back with her right hand and offers it to Taylor. Weir Dancin' is up ahead on the left.
"It's 4:15 and we're here with half an hour to spare!"
In the front hall of the dance studio, Linda checks the bulletin board. She is team mom and it's her job to help the girls change costumes between performances. There's a competition in Greenville, S.C., that weekend and one in Spartanburg the next. More hours in the car.
"Got it," she says and kisses Taylor goodbye.
4:35, 6:30, 9 p.m.
Twelve minutes later, Linda pulls into the parking lot at Arboretum Office Park on Providence Road. It's 4:35 p.m.
Her red lipstick is still fresh, no chips in her matching nail polish. Her short, red hair is neatly styled. She strides into the RE/MAX Metro building, a professional on the run, dressed in a crisp navy blue pantsuit and red shirt, blue and white heels, pearl earrings trimmed in gold. Tucked into her canvas briefcase are the children's schedules, clients' files and a copy of Bob Woodward's "Bush at War."
Linda is ready for anything.
She looks as pressed as she did when she walked into the office that morning. No one would guess she had spent the last 2 1/2 hours chauffeuring Taylor and Riley from school to karate to dance, from Charlotte to Fort Mill to Matthews, then back to Charlotte.
There's a Chick-fil-A salad waiting in the refrigerator, phone calls and e-mails to answer. She works until 6:30.
Then it's 25 miles back to Fort Mill. Pick up Riley. Stop at Subway to buy him a ham sandwich with lettuce, pickles and black olives. Home for an hour and a half. Riley showers and brushes his teeth. Back in the car with him at 9 to meet her ex-husband at the Exxon on Gold Hill Road. Wednesdays and Thursdays, Steve brings Taylor there from dance, cutting out 52 miles for Linda and Riley.
They park side by side, and it's a quick transfer: Taylor, her book bag, her dance bag.
Bye, Dad, I love you.
Hi, Mom.
Back at home, Taylor showers and brushes her teeth.
Lights out at 9:45.
'Can I just be a kid?'
Linda didn't grow up rushing around town, snacking on fast food. Few of us grew up that way. She sat down to supper every night with her mother, her father, her sister and two brothers. Every night, no exceptions, just like on TV. Her dad was in the military, and they moved from Maine to Texas to Newfoundland to North Carolina before he retired to Smyrna, but no matter where they lived, they gathered at the dinner table.
"Oh, I'd love to do that," Linda admits, "and we do do it—on weekends. We more than make up for anything we've lost on the weekdays. It's about compromise. This is what Taylor and Riley want to do. None of it's about me. I don't believe a parent should direct a kid. It's got to be their passion. If they told me tomorrow, 'I'm tired of dance,' 'I'm tired of karate,' 'Can I just be a kid?' I'd say, 'Sure.' But they won't do that. They love what they're doing.
"And I love it! I wouldn't change a thing."
5:30, two cups, 7:25
The alarm rings at 5:30 in the morning, waking Linda from a sound sleep. It's dark outside. She makes a pot of coffee and drinks two cups while she answers e-mails, unloads the dishwasher and puts away laundry. She works out for 20 minutes, showers, then wakes Taylor and Riley.
At 7:25, they're back in the car again.
