Are We There Yet?

Are We There Yet?

“Are we there yet?”

I blink in frustration.

I’ve kept count. That was the sixth time he’s asked, which is really frustrating if you know it’s an hour’s drive and we’ve only been on the road for ten minutes so far.

“Not yet,” I say in my, pretending I’m fine, voice. “Do you want to play one of those car games?”

“Nah,” he says, still looking out the window. “How long did you say?”

“An hour, so far it’s only been ten minutes. Here,” I say, “you can hold my watch and then you’ll know. When the longest hand gets to the three, we’ll be there.”

“The three on the circle?” he asks. It’s the first thing that’s interested him during a car ride since he was a baby.

“Yes, the long hand counts the minutes.”

“How?” he asks.

“Ah... it moves one space in the circle every minute.”

“What does the short one do?” he asks. I’m surprised! He’s usually not interested enough to ask questions.

“It counts the hours. So, every time a whole hour goes by it moves one space.”

“Oh. I wondered why it had a short one and a long one. I thought maybe one was broke. What about the one that moves all the time?”

“That’s the second hand.”

“Which ones is the first hand?”

“It’s a different kind of second. The second-hand counts seconds which on a clock is the name for a really short piece of time,” I was getting in over my head...

“Oh...” he said, but stopped asking questions. He spent the rest of the ride watching my watch.

When we finally got there, I wasn’t sure whether this had been an amazing idea on my part, or I was just a terrible mother...

And so, goes motherhood.