Can mainstream families survive without cars?

How I learned to stop worrying and love the bus
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.

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.

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.

Christine Gardner is a freelance writer making a daily effort to find ways moms can stop destroying the planet. She continues to use public transit, buy local, conserve energy, and live simply, despite fears her children one day will be labeled as "the weird Gardner girls" by their schoolmates.