The Tire Shop

Or, Maybe we *can* do this

My son hears the strange noise coming from the passenger side front tire before I do, but when he calls me over to listen, I cannot deny that it sure sounds like air being forced out of a balloon. Common sense knows this is not a good sound coming from a tire, but there is not much I can do about right now, because we have to leave to get my other son at therapy. I say a prayer and drive the car 20 minutes west on the freeway anyway. By the time we get back to our side of town an hour later, the yellow warning light is on, practically screaming at me, and the air pressure number for my tire is getting lower and lower, as my blood pressure gets higher and higher, by the mile. 

I want to get home so badly. It’s dinner time, it is dark and freezing rain outside, the kids–particularly the three littlest who are currently whining the loudest– have been in the car so much already today getting their big siblings to all the places, and I am, in general, in that mental state of the day moms around the world commonly call “Done.” Capital D. 

But I also know the tire will be flat by morning. And while I am not in the clearest thinking mode, I do have enough sense to realize that would be a bigger problem, involving tow trucks and home visit fees and even worse, not being able to get the kids to school. 

And friends, the children need to go to school.

A quick internet search tells me the Tire-Rama near our house is open until 6:00pm. It is 5:15pm. I weigh the crankiness coming from the backseat against the inability to get them to school in the morning, and I know what I have to do. I get off the freeway and turn right, away from home, to the tire shop. 

“Team,” I tell the kids, “we have to go by to see if they can put some air in and seal the tire for us, but I will run inside and ask if we can all just stay in the car while they do.” Obviously, they will hear of my plight with the half dozen children and such, and let us all stay in the car.

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry,” the kind man at the counter tells me. “I can’t let anyone stay in the car. But if you want to bring them inside, we have water and a few seats over there,” he points to a small cubicle-like waiting area. 

I follow his hand in the direction he is showing me, and feel the panic rising in my chest. He doesn’t know Cannon’s medicine has worn off by nighttime, which makes life even more interesting; or that the toddlers have spent four hours in the car today; or that everyone is starving. He doesn’t know I am Done. He couldn’t know. But he wants me to bring them all inside. To wait. 

There is no one to call right now, and I’m mad about that, because I’m supposed to have someone to call right now. My parents are on an airplane toward a vacation destination where it is not freezing rain at the moment, so grandpa as the backup is out, too. And I now have 38 minutes before this shop closes. It’s me and my six–one who hates new places and often hits his head on the wall when I encourage him how to appropriately act in one; and another whom I never even put shoes on when we left for therapy pick-up seventy-five minutes ago because we weren’t supposed to be getting out of the car. It’s us, and a small lobby with a water dispenser. 

I’d like to consider myself an independent and capable woman. But when my marriage ended six months ago, it was imagining moments like this–with not enough hands and unforeseen circumstances and no other options–that I knew I would hate being alone. That I would be scared of being a single mom, and other things like the fixer-of-the-tires, alone. 

I put the toddler with no shoes on my hip and apologize three times for telling him that he didn’t need them, then grab the hand of the nine-year-old boy I’ve learned I have to expect anything from. Standing there at my van door, I tell the kids what I always tell them when I desperately need their best: We are a team, guys. We can do this. My other four all hold hands and we run from the parking lot to the warmth of the lobby. 

And do you know what happens while we wait?

Nothing.

I mean, of course not nothing. Everything happens. But nothing terrible happens. No one runs away, or hits a head on a wall, or falls apart. No one needs to be carried back to the car screaming, which is a grace, because we aren’t allowed in the car. My eleven-year-old takes her toddler siblings potty one at a time while I stay with the other kids in the lobby. I’m pretty sure they all even wash their hands. The kids are fascinated by the circa 2001 water cooler and pour, I don’t know, 37 paper cups of water and I felt a little bit bad about the waste, but it is the least offensive possibility in this little waiting cubicle. We read every poster on the wall, multiple times. We ask silly, hypothetical questions about what dogs would say if they could talk. We are loud. We exchange two dollars for quarters and get Skittles that surely had an expiration date five years ago out of the metal candy machine.

And 30 minutes later, the kind man from the front desk walks in holding a small screw, and asks the boys if they want to put it in the “tire wrecker” bucket at the counter, where they collect all the other sharp objects that have been taken out of other customers’ tires. Then the man offers me the second most magical words a parent can hear: “No charge tonight, ma’am,” followed by a smile.

The first most magical thing would of course have been “Wow, your children are so good!” but you know what, I knew they were. They were so good. They were not afraid of a detour to the tire store, of a public display of our family with me at the helm. I was. But they did something that scared me. 

With a big toddler still on my hip, because again, he has no shoes, I start to corral my group out the door. I turn to look for my oldest, who is on her knees filling out a piece of paper on the chair in the waiting area.

“Harper, we gotta goooo,” I emphasize, not wanting to lose the obedient momentum we’ve got going.

“I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming, Mom. I’m just entering you to win a contest!”

I roll my eyes and tell her to meet me in the car. 

Once everyone is safely buckled in, slightly damp from the rain, I get in the driver’s seat and exhale. This was a small thing. And it probably sounds like such a small thing. But I didn’t want to face it. From the moment my son pointed out the sound he heard, I was afraid of an only moderately stressful night showing the world how incapable I am of being a single mom to six kids. 

The thing is, it wasn’t even my ability that showed up in the tire shop, it was their ability. It was my kids. It’s us doing this. And that is a different way entirely to look at everything. We are capable.

It cost me two dollars in old Skittles and it cost the tire shop several wasted paper cups. But we found some bravery that night. I would have paid a whole lot more for what I got.

“I’m so proud of us, you guys,” I turn around and tell my van full, thanking my two big kids extra for their diligence and help with bathroom runs. “Should we get ice cream on the way home?” A chorus of cheers erupts. 

It is the most okay I have felt in six months.

A few days later, I get the little kids to bed and as I am heading back downstairs, my watch dings with a text. It’s a number I don’t recognize, so I go find my phone, where I can pull up the whole message. I read it all, and start laughing hysterically. “Harper!” I yell down the hall, “come read this with me.” 

“Oh my gosh, Mom! I told you!” she jumps up and down with what I can only call, well, glee. 

I do not pretend to know much about God’s ways but at this moment, I am certain he has the most winsome, childlike sense of humor. We got a tire for no charge that night. Even more important, we got belief.

And Harper won me a Mary Kay Beauty Experience in a drawing out of an old wicker basket at Tire-Rama.