Each morning, I grab the clothes I’ve set out the night before and finish getting dressed in the garage, because I don’t want to wake my family. Then I go into my neighborhood and run, although running is a misnomer. Really, it’s more of a jog — and sometimes just a walk.

These legs are made for parenting.

These jog/walk sessions don’t have anything to do with being beautiful and thin, although I could do without the little mommy-skirt bathing suit. In large part, running is just a prelude to cycling. For months, my bike hung inside the garage while the streets were too snowy to navigate safely. But after a winter of bus rides, walks, and even occasionally driving my husband to work so I could have the car rather than spend one more day trapped inside, I’ve resumed life with a bike.

It hasn’t been easy getting back to carting my two- and four-year-old daughters behind me to the playground and the grocery store. This year, they weigh a total of 70 pounds. That’s 10 pounds heavier than last year — and my thigh muscles are pissed.

Pedaling Through the Golden Age

My SUV-driving girlfriend, whose family recently moved into a newly built exurban home, once called my bike trips to the grocery store “cute.” I’d like to think she meant “incredibly cost-savvy, saving thousands of dollars each year by not driving.”

But I think she meant just what she said — cute. And possibly a little crazy. Can’t you just imagine me riding a bike around town with my three kids, she laughed.

It’s true, I can’t imagine my friend riding a bike around town with her three kids — but I know one mom who does. She lives near me, and I know her only because we happen to frequent the same playground, almost always on bike. With three kids in her trailer, she’s hard to miss.

This mom has told me she hates to drive when everything is so close. And sometimes, her circumstances make biking the best option: Often, she taxis her oldest to and from kindergarten because the district won’t bus kids living less than a mile and a half from school.

I’ll face the same dilemma in another year. But for now, I’m in a sort of Golden Age of parenting.

After two years of living with just one car, I’ve discovered that my problems are few if I follow a handful of simple rules: Know my limitations. Get organized. Don’t forget my wallet and thus need to return home during an outing that cascades into a series of two-year-old tantrums, a lost pink stuffed bunny, and instead of lunch at the neighborhood coffee shop, a few slices of pizza at that local gas station because naptime is something nobody wants to see ignored.

Of course there are bad days, but mostly my uncomplicated life is just loads of fun. I have finally learned to relax and allow myself to simply enjoy hanging out with my daughters. Despite signing up for more organized activities than I’d care to admit, our summer is reserved mostly for rides to the local nature preserve, the community pool, the empty university campus near our house and, as boring as this sounds, the grocery store. It seems there’s no end to the lessons and entertainment these simple trips provide.

When one mom tells me her son hardly ever watches television because her kids are involved in so many activities, I am tempted to jump in and play her game. My laundry line, compost heap, and CSA membership have proven to be great educational tools for my daughters — and fun, too. With the right spin, they have the potential to be very impressive to the over-extended mommy set.

Of course, my best efforts at super-parenting are often overshadowed by my shortcomings. My kids watch television. I bribe them with suckers. I yell at them sometimes. My thighs get tired from the biking. And so I run.

Preschool’s Out for Summer

This summer, my husband and I are facing a new challenge. We intended to enroll our four-year-old daughter in the only affordable preschool within walking distance of my house. After learning that this fall’s session is already full, I went into panic mode.

This reaction was not without merit, judging by the expressions of other moms from my daughter’s swim class. They said I should start looking around, and right away. “Maybe you can get on some waiting lists,” one suggested.

They told me their daughters’ preschool, which is five miles from my house and too far toward affluence to be on a bus route, was one of many that filled quickly.

Despite experts who say children need more unstructured playtime, I knew I needed something, because if my daughter didn’t know her alphabet by the time she was in kindergarten, obviously it would ruin her life.

I even began to wonder if we needed a second car to safeguard her future.

At some point, I realized buying a car was not a logical solution to educating my children. Instead, I put my daughter on the waiting list of the nearby school and started a Sesame Street-inspired letter-of-the-day program at my house. I’ll let her play with the worms from our garden, pick some wildflowers, and help me bake cupcakes. I’ll hope for the best.

It’s pretty obvious I’m not super enough to compete in a race to see whose child can fill a résumé first. But that’s not why I’m running.

Consider the alternatives.

Photo: iStockphoto

Descent into madness. That turned out to be pretty accurate.

We have a long and storied history of not doing things like other people. Instead of driving in a nice air-conditioned car complete with DVD for entertaining our daughters, we boarded a crowded Amtrak train. Instead of hailing cabs, we opted for the subway. Instead of McDonald’s, we chose sustainable seafood at a busy downtown restaurant even though our daughters, 1 and 3, were on the verge of meltdown.

Walking across Millennium Park at the height of the mid-afternoon heat, we realized we had erred in judgment. And once again, we were all alone and very sweaty.

And when you’re very sweaty, it’s hard to act like a normal, mainstream family that isn’t followed around by security guards. We’re not homeless, I wanted to explain. We just love the environment.

Frankly, I’m tired of explaining myself.

With this green movement sweeping the country, it’s amazing to me that the parents I know aren’t more concerned with their unapologetically huge environmental footprint. They’re concerned about food allergies, whether Crocs will lead to certain death, and massive recalls on toys made in China. Actually, I’m worried about that last one too. There’s so much to worry about that you want to align your fears with others.

As most parents know, judging can be a sort of sport in suburbia. Knowing other people subscribe to your lifestyle helps validate whatever life you choose. And if they don’t subscribe to your lifestyle — well, moms are notoriously critical of each other.

I’m sick of feeling like the other moms at daycare — almost all of them minivan drivers — believe my reason for not driving stems from a recent DUI.

Even I, with all my moral superiority in caring about the future health and happiness of all children, catch myself playing this dangerous game. “Oh, you’re building a new house in the suburbs? You don’t make your own organic baby food? You bathe your children every day?”

Yes, the eco-craze has been slow to catch on in my circles. I’m always meeting really nice people at the playground, but outside of kid chitchat, there’s usually little left to say. And I’ve not once seen anybody visit my favorite place, the tiny nature preserve with wildflowers and at least one turtle.

I continue with the isolation, the sweatiness, and the inconvenience in the hope that my kids will learn they don’t need much to be happy, the same lesson I learned from my father. When he recently died, I was left with just a St. Christopher medal he received as a child, a box of old smoking pipes, a pocket knife, several jars of canned tomatoes from his garden, and the knowledge that it’s possible to have an impact on your children despite the teenage kicking and screaming for designer jeans.

My moments of hope come in small doses.

Not long ago, a new grocery store finally opened a mile from our house, adjacent to our community’s bike trail. This is a huge deal for me, because I’m finally able to complete every household errand without a car.

Giddy from the abundance of free samples at the grand opening, I met Melissa, a mom in the process of going down to one car. Her husband commutes by bike. She just bought her own bike and a kid trailer. She had read Chris Balish’s book How to Live Well Without Owning a Car, and was struck by the cost savings.

What a day. I can now run to the store for milk at a moment’s notice — and know that I’m not alone.

Even so, the transition from pariah to mainstream hasn’t quite arrived. The day before my family and I left for Chicago, I ran into a friend in a store parking lot. I told her about our trip and she asked what it was like to ride Amtrak with children. “I heard it can be a disaster,” she said. I quickly recalled a five-hour train delay we experienced last year that required a hotel stay. “Oh, it’s great,” I told her.

I lie like this whenever I think I might be able to convert someone. Just ask any mom who might have commented on my bike and kid trailer over the last five months. I enter into a 15-minute sales pitch.

“Oh the girls just love it, and it’s so easy to pull,” I start. “Look, it has UVA protection and a rain flap. And what a great way to get in shape!” As the mom backs away toward the parking lot, I begin my detailed explanation of how quickly I can get to Target.

But it wasn’t a complete lie about the train. I really do think it’s a fantastic way to travel. I can focus all my attention on my darling girls. I can read to them, color with them, and pull them down off the seat in front of us. If I have to endure the icy stares from the childless among you — especially the snoring college students sprawled out on the seats as if they owned Amtrak — that’s the way it’s got to be. Just because my children are small doesn’t mean they shouldn’t go to Chicago.

And I don’t think they should have to go by car.

My kids have a ton of toys, mostly bought by well-meaning relatives, and I hate almost all of them. They’re ugly. They’re noisy. And now we can add dangerous to the list. Great. I recently started thinking about buying more eco-friendly toys. But geesh, are those things expensive. I’m wondering if my girls will be happy with one doll for Christmas.

Maybe fewer toys wouldn’t be such a bad thing. If only I could convince my mom of this. And the rest of America.

Sure, meat is murder and all that, not to mention it’s contributing more emissions than most of us slightly green carnivores would like to admit, but it is tasty.

And filling. I learned that last bit in June when my family gave up meat at the slight urging of vegetarian Gristmillers responding to my query about the best ways to green my family life. It took me about three tummy-rumbling weeks before I learned veggie burgers satisfied my craving for hearty food.

In a month’s time I came away with conflicting thoughts about meat.

For instance, kids can be easily converted to vegetarians.

Mine devoured pesto made from farm-fresh arugula, a new staple at our house thanks to the handy recipe from my community supported agriculture farmer, who helped me realized kale is more than just a back scratcher. And even if my kids hated pesto or sautéed kale, I could always hide it in their potato pancakes the next morning.

A vegetarian diet seems perfectly fine for children. I’m not sure how the vegan crowd does it, but my daughters’ pediatrician shook her head at the idea of not giving my children milk or eggs.

I was surprised at how tough a vegetarian diet was for my husband and me. We ate more foods from the middle aisles of the grocery store — breads, pastas, and crackers — and my husband reverted to frozen meals for his work lunch because lettuce-based meals don’t travel well. By the end of the month, I started craving fast food, which I hardly ever eat. I finally satisfied my hunger with fake meat sandwiches, which seem unnatural and are expensive — but ooh, were they delicious.

So we returned to our meat-eating ways in early July. I was full once again, but I came away unsatisfied. This could be because we resumed eating meat with a series of gluttonous Independence Day celebrations, but even good cuts of meat left me a little sluggish.

So I made a deal with myself. I’m not a vegetarian. My family just bought $20 in pork ribs from an organic farmer for this weekend. I won’t lie. I’m pretty excited about it.

But my family’s health is a top concern, leading me to make more vegetarian meals and buy mostly locally raised meat. And in case any mom out there is considering going vegetarian, I’m here to let you know: cycling around town plus more veggies is a great way to get back into those pre-baby clothes.

I’m just saying.

Or softball. Or piano. I did take dance lessons, but the name “Klutzy Chrissy” didn’t happen by accident.

My parents preferred to send me outside. Even in our Detroit neighborhood, which developed a reputation during the last 30 years of offering a wide assortment of crack houses, my friends and I explored the alleys while making sure to wear shoes as protection from broken bottles.

Ah, nature.

My parents certainly didn’t view themselves as the last of a dying breed. But as the National Forum on Children and Nature works to get America’s kids back outside, I’m busy forcing my lifetime of outdoor lessons upon my children. There’s a sense today that parents need to get their kids involved in organized gatherings. Coupled with the constant connection of technology — I’ve actually seen cyclists chatting on their cell phones — people’s free time is no longer their own.

My parents made their career with horses. They were outside, so I was outside. There wasn’t any other option. Plus, we didn’t have cable so there was no reason to stay at home.

Now I’m patting myself on the back because this summer I’m showing my daughters, who are still too young to be set free into the neighborhood, the wonders of nature. Little things, like a family of ducks feasting on tiny fish in a stream below an underpass. Or stopping the bike to examine a patch of prairie plants.

And yet, I’m still wrought with guilt over the feeling that we’re goofing off.

Is it goofing off to take a few minutes to look at a stream? My fellow parents might think so, as they rush from one lesson to the next. And sometimes even I think so — shouldn’t I be in front of the computer or the TV news, learning everything I can about the energy bill?

Like everything else about kids, there’s no clear-cut way to parent. Those staying at home to raise children, mostly women deemed uninformed by some, need to work even harder to keep up with the issues of the day.

But it takes time to show kids to the edge of a stream, prepare healthy home-cooked meals, and tend a tiny garden. Maybe it’s 12 years of Catholic school, but I’ve got to agree with the Pope’s message of “working less, wanting less, spending less.” With a 24-hour news cycle, maybe it also means knowing less.

So I sacrifice some time in front of the news, and as a result I’m semi-uninformed. My lax views on stranger safety will probably seem to endanger my daughters. Some days, the only news I get is from the radio while I make dinner.

I’m teaching my kids about their world. As an adult, I’m sacrificing knowledge for the greater lesson of rediscovering nature with my children.

My only unity with most parents staying home is our shared perception of isolation. But I know there are other outdoor-prone parents out there. I’ve seen their work.

Coming home from our duck observing, I saw two teenish-looking girls who had stopped their bikes by the stream and were hunched over the water. OK, maybe they were fishing out their Mary Jane pipe from the stream. But I’d like to think they were undertaking the more innocent task of seeing nature.

On Mother’s Day, May 13, a wheel fell off my stroller.

Walking is my main mode of transportation, and I love it. Even with its distance limitations, pushing a stroller felt like a safe alternative to driving and less annoying than taking the bus.

My daughters, 18 months and 3, are too old for us to justify buying another stroller and too young to walk the two-mile roundtrip to downtown, the playground, or the library.

Since I gave up driving almost a year ago, I’ve ignored the advice of cycling advocates, both on the web and in real life, because I thought walking served my family just fine.

Now, without a stroller, it was time to buy a bike. And a trailer that hooks onto the back. And helmets. And test drive it to the downtown vegetarian coffee shop for a breakfast sandwich.

And finally this week, I strapped in the girls for a ride to the playground — and they loved it. Why, I think, did I wait so long?

The last time I used a bike for getting around town, I was an immortal 23-year-old riding against traffic in Washington, D.C. Sure Normal, Ill., is no East Coast, but am I risking my kids’ safety, especially after the discussions about bike safety here on Gristmill in the last week? I’m sure I won’t dangerously maneuver around cabs in rush hour traffic, but even on mostly empty side streets I worry about getting hit by a car, something I never thought about pushing the stroller.

Also, bikes are expensive. A one-income household has to make these decisions carefully. What if I bought a bike and trailer and never used them, thrusting my family into financial ruin?

Enter my husband, the voice of reason, who said, “You’ll ride it to the pool with the girls, have a great time, and love it.”

“Then,” he added, “you’ll pass the gas station on the way home, see people fueling up at $4 a gallon and think, ‘Suckers’.”

I can see why cyclists are passionate about riding.

The idea of running parental errands on a bike isn’t unique. I’ve often thought about copying this grocery-toting Portland mom. And I see other parents around town carting their kids to the playground, although I have yet to see them at the grocery store.

A bike makes sense for any parent who wants to drive less. Biking to work doesn’t have to mean riding to an office and back.

My ride to the community pool takes 10 minutes. A regional grocery chain plans to open a store a mile from my house, accessible from the bike-friendly Constitution Trail. I could lose 10 pounds.

After my first trip to the playground with the Trek hybrid and Burley kid trailer, I asked my 3-year-old if she liked the bike. Yes, she said. I asked if she missed the stroller.

Yes, she repeated.

Then she added, “I like the bike better.”

Yeah. Me too.

“It’s like They know,” my husband said. “They’re on to you.”

“They” are the companies selling household liquids and powders for a little spring cleaning. And the secret my husband thought they’d discovered? I had decided to purge my pine-fresh scents and 99.9 percent germ killers in favor of a few products our “great-grandparents used,” as advised by green-parenting maverick MaGreen.

Here’s a little secret the cleaning companies don’t want to promote on daytime TV: This older, less-expensive version of cleaning often works better. Things like Swiffer mops don’t make the job easier. They make it more irritating, because they don’t work well and you spend a fortune to do a half-ass job on the kitchen floor.

So I decided to load up on the basics. Vinegar. Baking soda. Washing soda. Borax, which apparently cleans everything. Two bars of laundry soap.

It’s one of those green choices that will actually save my one-income family some money — unlike paying $374 to join a local CSA, a move suggested by several Gristmill readers.

That CSA bill comes out to only $14 a week, a very reasonable amount for organic vegetables, but is a huge chunk for us to pay in one lump sum. We were only able to do it thanks to a well-timed IRS refund check.

The cleaning products, on the other hand, totaled $12.40 and will last for months.

Parents have become so complacent about using paper towels and disinfectant — they never notice that a hand-knit dishrag and soap actually works better. A quarter cup of vinegar in the rinse cycle takes out all the scratchiness of line-dried towels and doesn’t smell. My friend sent a link to a recipe for homemade laundry detergent, which costs about $2 per batch, or less than 6 cents a load. It works great. And when you have kids, you have a lot of laundry.

Worries that greening my house meant it wouldn’t be as clean were unfounded. In the end, I think it might be cleaner, although I haven’t yet tackled huge jobs like shampooing the carpet or cleaning the oven, so I welcome thoughts on that.

Now, on to spring cleaning. A mom’s life is so glamorous.

You know it’s true. They stand as examples of our populating an overpopulated planet. They need a lot of stuff, or at least that’s what other parents and Babies ‘R’ Us tell us. And nothing says “earth hater” more than the billions of dirty diapers now calling landfills home.

But here’s the thing: Before kids, I wasn’t much of an environmentalist.

It wasn’t until I birthed my children and moved them to suburbia that I finally made the decision to strive for a simple, sustainable existence. If I was going to stay home with them, I was going to enjoy it — and that did not mean driving around town all day looking for playgroups and sales on kitchenware. I didn’t need to drive a minivan or shop at Wal-Mart. Instead, I’d take the bus … to Target. Better, right? Maybe a little better?

I struggle with these decisions, and the most frustrating part is that even though I stopped driving (mostly) and made my life completely inconvenient, I still do virtually nothing to stop global warming.

Every day makes me wonder if it’s worth it. Sometimes — like when my girls and I leave story time in a thunderstorm complete with ice pellets, we miss our bus and the coffee shop clerk seems displeased that I don’t want my coffee to go — I think I’m making things worse. The minivan moms don’t seem concerned with the state of the world (but don’t get them started on stranger safety).

Then I think, maybe I’m not supposed to be the solver of problems. Maybe I’m the teacher.

I just can’t help feeling that parents should do something, any little thing, toward a better future for their kids. When my girls get older and ask why we don’t just drive to the library like normal people, I can explain my motives. And for now, I can make small changes to green my household. It’s not all at once, and I have a long way to go (No Impact Man’s family in New York City has taken a decidedly more drastic road I simultaneously covet and fear), but I try.

In fact, I’ll try anything once. I want to live greener, you want me to live greener, I want you to live greener. Dare me to do something and I’ll let you know how it goes.

I had just hit my breaking point.

Carolyn rides the bus.

Photos: Christine Gardner

My husband, Steve, and I were pushing our two daughters along a searing sidewalk built precariously close to a major road, beer-bottle shards crunching underfoot. We were in Illinois’ state capital of Springfield, just 70 miles from our Normal home, and I was on my 20th car-free day.

In the pit of my stomach I could feel the onset of failure.

But we pushed on. We pushed past the track-marked girl sitting two booths from us at McDonald’s. We pushed to a shaded grassy hill in view of the capitol building. Eventually we pushed into a hotel for the night, where we imbibed on the floor of the bathroom, our two-year-old finally asleep in a bed and her baby sister snoozing in a complimentary playpen.

This isn’t starting well, you might think. A suburban housewife gives up driving for one month and comes away reporting that it can’t be done. How helpful is that?

Yes, the laundry list is long. Food costs are exorbitant, a problem for households with only one steady paycheck. Public transportation often is difficult and confusing. Vacationing is expensive and, as you might have gathered, hellish.

But we did it. Coated in grime, feet aching and exhausted, we made it home without an automobile. And suddenly, this experience seemed a little more like adventure and a little less like failure.

Getting started: “Green A” bus to downtown Bloomington, 8:10 a.m., July 1

My first bus trip rocked.

My older daughter and I headed to the farmers’ market for as many vegetables as we could cram in our backpacks. After shopping, I set Carolyn free on the lawn of the city square. Within minutes, she met Dana, also 2, who seemed just as interested as my daughter in climbing a sign marking the downtown landmark.

Dana turned out to belong to Sara Freeman, an assistant professor of theater at Illinois Wesleyan University, a former resident of Madison and Chicago, and part of a one-car household. This is too easy, I thought. My first day and I’m already meeting kindred spirits, automotively speaking.

The thing is, Sara would tell me later, owning just one car isn’t that big a deal. She sometimes walks. Her husband rides his bike. They carpool or trade off. They have to be conscious of who has the car when, but it hasn’t really been a problem.

Like others who live in the twin cities of Bloomington-Normal, Sara sees the divide. There are people who live in the older neighborhoods, closer to the downtowns, and others living in newer, often swankier homes east of Veteran’s Parkway, this city’s commercial artery to Wal-Mart and all its big-box buddies. One set thinks, “Ugh, I have to go out to Veteran’s.” The other thinks, “Thank god I don’t have to go downtown.”

At the university, there’s talk about sustainability, how to reach students and the general public. Sara, who is pregnant with her second child and thinking maybe her family needs another car, said she wishes this area had enough people to make a car-share program work. That way, she said, she wouldn’t have to go car shopping — and I wouldn’t get stuck during a day trip to Springfield.

En route: “Pink D” bus to Meijer Super Store, 8:58 a.m., July 10

Ten days into this experiment, I knew one thing for sure — the stroller is the most hated object in all of bus world. This, for me, was made much more frustrating by my fumbling attempts to steer my extra-long double stroller. To make matters worse, I sometimes require the dreaded wheelchair lift. A friend of mine with two young children said I shouldn’t let it bother me: “It’s the same as a wheelchair,” she said. I suppose that’s true. “Having kids is like being handicapped,” she added.

Just another Normal day.

Hmm.

But a bus ride with small children is an effort in feeling bad, and a tiny bit hindered. One morning, as a particularly crowded bus arrived, Steve and I had both girls and the stroller and asked to use the lift. Our driver obliged. A passenger on his cell phone warned someone he’d be late. A family and their kids are getting on, he said.

As I got off the bus, the driver said into her walkie-talkie, “Her husband is here, but she wants to use the lift.” That’s what I’d thought I was supposed to do. Now, because of me, all these people were late for work.

It all begged the question, “Who is public transportation for?” A 2003 study of the local transit system showed that most people who take the bus don’t do so by choice. Randomly surveyed people didn’t care much about public transit, other than not really wanting to fund improvements.

Melanie Overend of Bloomington-Normal Public Transit says the system’s No. 1 objective is to provide a ride to those who need it, although efforts are made to convince others to ride. But with light traffic, free parking, and a phobia I like to call “I Might Come in Contact with Poor People,” it’s a tough sell.

Back on the Pink D, in an effort to speed things along, I tried to be helpful and lift my stroller with one arm and my chunky baby Penelope with the other. A stranger, one of many to lend a hand during this experiment, grabbed the 25-pound device from me.

We were going to Meijer Superstore, a Michigan-based Wal-Mart predecessor, for what would be the last major shopping trip of the month (mostly because it became a huge pain). Later, I would settle on paying $4.49 for a box of butter at a downtown drugstore, $1.25 for a cup of sour cream at the gas station, and $8.99 for a pound of coffee at the vegetarian deli — items that total $6.70 at Wal-Mart prices.

It’s not unusual, or that surprising, to see people on the bus hauling plastic bags from America’s favorite superstore. When I look at the other passengers, I mostly see people with no alternative to the bus. I try not to inconvenience them, or knock them with my stroller.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bus: Black Mazda to Normal, Ill., February 2006

I had high hopes for Normal.

Let me begin by saying I have never claimed to be an environmentalist. My father, a Nebraska-born farm boy, saves rainwater for his vegetable garden and has been known to reuse coffee filters, but these are not altruistic actions. As for me, I grew up inside Detroit’s city limits, with strong memories of trash-littered streets and exhaust-blackened snow. The poor — and also my father — collected pop and beer cans for their 10 cent deposit, but again, it wasn’t really about the environment.

Oddly enough, I also knew about exploring the great outdoors from spending time on my grandparents’ small farm. What I lacked was an understanding of life in the middle.

How did I come to live in a suburban setting? Economics. The housing market. The job market. Children. My husband’s own suburban childhood. Dumb luck.

I left the workplace after the birth of my second child and decided to create my own version of suburbia — a safe, comfortable place within walking distance of a downtown, or a store, or a bakery. Our post-World War II ranch, with a measly 1,600 square feet but two full baths, has large trees in the backyard. It’s a mile from downtown Normal and within walking distance of six parks. I’m pretty friendly with my immediate neighbors, some of whom are original owners in this neighborhood.

Mary and Byron Benscoter bought their house in 1955 and raised three children there. They told me that in the beginning, this street was congested with children and by mid-morning, housewives would generally be out mingling. Just a few blocks away, there was a corner store, a gas station, and a restaurant. Families didn’t have a lot of money, Mary said, so there wasn’t much traveling, and the moms weren’t running kids to activities all over town.

The neighborhood, which was built on an old vegetable farm, is different today. There are some older families and some young, childless couples. There are very few children. It seems most families prefer newer homes, and our realtor, who had raised her own four children in this very neighborhood, had warned us: they prefer to live east of Veteran’s Parkway.

There’s that street again.

I can sit at the playground closest to my house, across a parking lot from a swimming club, and watch minivans come and go for hours. To my knowledge, I’m the only mom who walks there.

I instinctively believe that people are driving too much, too far, in too large of vehicles. The numbers tell me I’m right. The Environmental Protection Agency released a “Holy Crap We Drive A Lot” report in April, stating that the United States is responsible for a quarter of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Using data from 1990 to 2004, it reports that the popularity of SUVs and minivans is increasing. The number of miles we drive is increasing. The number of cars is increasing. The number of households with more than four vehicles now exceeds the number with none.

I live in a neighborhood that once enjoyed a childhood of its own, but now has settled into a sort of middle age. With my lime-green bus pass, July became the month when I reverted to a forgotten time, agreeing with a frequent request from my two-year-old: “Bus? Sure. Let’s take the bus.”

The slow and the curious: Walking near downtown Normal, 7:30 a.m., July 9

For all the places the bus took me, and as much as I relied on it, I have one major complaint. It doesn’t run on Sunday, known in some circles as the Lord’s Day.

Walking was my only other option — not usually an awful one, until you consider the oppressive heat of a Midwestern July. So why not try church?

I arrived there with Penelope and could feel the eyes of churchgoers watching me park the stroller under a tree, curious about this unfamiliar scene. I wish the world didn’t see a pedestrian and her sweaty baby as objects of pity.

The gospel that day was a story of Jesus losing his ability to perform miracles because the townspeople lacked faith. After a woman of faith touched him (I never realized how Freudian church could be), he recovered his healing hands. The priest also made some reference to the broken air conditioner.

I left early, when a hungry Penelope started to wail, and made my way downtown, where an art festival was waking up for a final day. The day promised to be especially sticky, so at 9 a.m., I started moseying homeward on the 24-mile Constitution Trail, already busy with runners and cyclists. I felt fortunate to have gone out so early.

It had been about an hour since I left the church, and as I passed by it again I stopped to feed Penelope at a nearby playground. From the park bench, I watched dozens of cars trickle out of the church’s parking lot. Then I saw one older couple leaving on foot. I thought, “At least somebody else gets it.”

Getting home: “Red B” bus leaving Target, 10:35 a.m., July 24

There is nothing more unpredictable than the temperament of a two-year-old. One day, she’s sickly sweet. The next, she’s throwing herself on the floor of Target, grinning ever so slightly.

I did most of my July discount shopping at Target. The major grocery stores, including Wal-Mart, were difficult to reach despite being located less than a mile from one another. Major shopping trips became a nightmare. And again, that’s not taking my two-year-old X factor into consideration.

But Mom, I miss the car!

On that 24th day without a car, after the novelty of the bus had worn off, Carolyn went into toddler overdrive. She pulled the hair, twice, of a woman seated in front of us. She ran away from me inside the store. Then, as I tried to discipline her, we missed our bus back to Normal. When we finally returned to Normal, we missed our bus home.

Carolyn had cried on and off all morning. This time, my own tears began to well. In desperation, I called Steve to come get Carolyn, and he did. I walked home, temperatures now into the 90s. As that damn Orange H passed me, I realized a one-hour trip had taken three hours.

That’s the thing about the bus. It’s usually on time. It always runs the same route. So why is it that every time we take it, our experience is different? If I drove 20 times to the store with as many different routes, every trip would be nearly identical.

Returning to Normal

That trip to Springfield began a slow decline in any interest I had in leaving the house. Before the trip, I had taken the bus 27 times. I took it only 13 after, and never again with the stroller. We started spending more time at the local park and in our backyard kiddie pool.

Not driving didn’t seem that inconvenient at first, because I prefer walking anyway, if I’m not going too far. It’s not about the environment. I just like the idea of living simply, especially since having my girls.

I can hear some of you: “Shut up already about your kids.” I say let’s talk a little more about kids. Kids and safety, two topics never in short supply at the playground.

Month after month, Parents magazine implores moms to see the dangers. Germs. Pacifiers. Bottle feeding. Cribs. Carseat installation. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. And that’s just a sampling of the August issue.

The movie’s over, but the
story’s just beginning.

Photo: Dawn Riordan

But nothing is more unsafe than creating an inhospitable world for our children. While sacrifice might seem like the only option for an eco-friendly mom, it doesn’t have to be. If women changed the way we think about modern motherhood, choosing pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods near local stores, life could get easier. Women would have company, possibly even next door, and softball could return to something the neighborhood kids organize among themselves.

When my family returned to Normal after the Springfield fiasco, we rested. That night, Steve and I walked downtown to see An Inconvenient Truth.

What an accurate title.

Nobody wants to sacrifice Wal-Mart for shopping downtown. Or their backyard playsets for the neighborhood playground. Or their SUV for anything.

But there’s more to be gained.

It’s August now, and my family has agreed to the more realistic test of relying on just one car. If that works, we might make it permanent, using the proceeds from selling our other car to finance a bike.

It’s a decision we’re making with the future in mind. After all, I try really hard to keep Carolyn from toppling off the monkey bars — shouldn’t I do my best to keep her and Penelope safe for the long haul? It isn’t always going to be convenient, but that’s not why we’re here.