By Gretchen Leigh

Last weekend we decided to go to church at a different time than we normally do. It was Palm Sunday and we wanted to attend as a family and my oldest daughter works weekends. So we all got up early to get to the nine o’clock mass. That’s the thing about being Catholic; we have four opportunities to show up during a weekend.

When my girls were little, that early mass was typical for us along with the hundreds of other kids with their parents. Those were the days of mass hysteria at our parish. When my daughters were toddlers, something like 25 percent of my church’s population was under five years old.

Now that my daughters have grown up and can handle either an evening mass or later morning one, I’ve avoided that early service. I remember the constant buzz of all those children. Also chasing my youngsters down to get them dressed and fed on time was the least favorite part of my week.

So Sunday, with a pit in my stomach from past memories, I arose early, took a shower, and went to their rooms to wake them. Surprise, surprise, they were already awake. Oh yeah, for all intents and purposes, they are adults now and are responsible for their own schedules.

I forget this phenomenon a lot, because I’m still concerned with how they are managing their time. I still feel responsible for them, because I am their mother. Reality tells me, though, that besides dinner and laundry, their schedules don’t affect me at all. And now that they’ve gotten opinions and lives of their own, I can start backing off from hyper-focusing on their activities.

Then my youngest sprung a doozy on me yesterday. She wanted to take the light rail into Seattle this year to Sakura-con and Comicon (conventions where they dress up as cartoon characters) instead of bus 150, which I discovered for them last year. I used to chaperone them from a hotel lobby in downtown Seattle, so I was delighted by my innovative idea of public transportation.

I knew about the light rail; one of the other moms chaperoned them their first year and used the light rail instead of driving them. But Bus 150 is at the bottom of the hill from our house. The light rail is 30 minutes away and parking is impossible on a Friday when all the commuters have already left for work.

Plus, I found bus 150. The light rail was not my vision, because this is the first year the girls are taking full responsibility for their own transportation. I’m not even dropping them off at the station. I imagined them driving to a Park and Ride by a Bus 150 stop. I even found a better Park and Ride with more available parking spaces.

My daughter informed me that people stared when they rode the bus. Stared? Really?

“You’re wearing crazy costumes on your way to the conventions. Of course they’re staring. They’ll stare on the light rail, too.”

“It’s a different kind of staring,” she said.

Not knowing why I cared since I wasn’t involved, except that I was obviously losing control, I pulled up my best parenting panties, screamed internally, and calmly told her she should use my car so at least they could all ride in the same vehicle.

There weren’t many little ones at the 9 a.m. mass last weekend. It occurs to me that the children who made up the mass hysteria at my church all those years ago, are now loose on the light rail.