An Innocent Mistake

I was just getting out of the bath tub yesterday when I heard Ariana coming up the back steps, home from school.  I hurried out to help her in, and lo and behold there behind her was my niece, Sydney.

Thinking that I must be losing my mind, because I didn’t remember my sister asking me to keep her, I asked her if she was supposed to be coming to our house.

She informed that that no she wasn’t, but that her dad wasn’t waiting for her at the bus stop, and it didn’t look like any lights were on in the house, so she told the bus driver that apparently her dad wasn’t home.  I asked where her little sister was supposed to be, and she informed me that Grammy Reinard still had Lauryn, that her dad hadn’t picked her up yet.  (It didn’t dawn on me then to wonder how she knew her dad hadn’t picked up her sister yet.)

I called down to my sister’s house, just to check and when there was no answer, I thought that I had better let my sister know what’s going on, I called her at work and asked if she knew where her husband was.  She informed me that her husband was probably out waiting for Syd to get off the bus.  I told her he’d have a long wait, because she was at my house, and that she claimed her dad wasn’t home, and that her sister was still at Grammy’s.

My sister just about lost it at that point.  We only have one car, she told me, he can’t possibly have gone anywhere, because I have it.  I told her that the girls were playing, and that Syd would be fine here until she got off work.

She called back a bit later, her husband had picked up Lauryn at 2pm and had just been a few mintues late getting out to the bus stop to grab Syd. She couldn’t understand why Syd hadn’t just went up to the house.

The bus drops her off and picks her up at the end of their road, which is only 150 feet or so, no farther than my kids have to walk out to the end of our lane, it’s just that their lane is a township road.  So she literally could step out of the bus and in two feet be in her own yard, without having to walk up the road.

And of course, it was nice and sunny out, so obviously you wouldn’t see any lights on in the house.  Heck, there were no lights on in my house when the kids came in.

I have to say, that when my sister got off work and came to pick up Syd, I have never seen her as mad at her daughter.  I think she intended to have a talk with the bus driver about not letting her off at my house without a note, too.  If Syd knows she can pull one over on the bus driver, and get to come to my house whenever she wants.

But in a real emergency,when there really is no one home, our kids can travel between the two houses without ever even seeing the road because of the path we keep cleared between her back yard and mine.