“How was your day today?”
No response. “Did you have fun?” Still nothing.
At the stoplight on Ranch Road 12 and Hunter Road in San Marcos, I laughed to myself and thought about how silly this one-sided conversation must sound. I glanced in the mirror clipped to the backseat headrest and caught my 13-month-old daughter’s grin. She can’t talk yet, but I can’t wait for the day she finally answers back.
I live and work in Wimberley, a town that prides itself on being family friendly. And it is—except when it comes to daycare. There’s only one option in town for babies her age, and I’ve been on the waitlist for more than a year. So every weekday we make the 30-minute drive to San Marcos, where she goes to daycare. That adds up to two hours of commuting each day: one hour with my daughter, one hour solo.
We’ve learned to make the most of it. Together we listen to audiobooks and albums I think she should know. While some babies get The Wheels on the Bus, mine gets Turnpike Troubadours. I like to tell myself it’s making her smarter, or at least building character. Only time will tell.
I narrate the drive like a tour guide: “Look at that bird!” or “We’re going over the river.” She probably understands none of it, yet she looks at me and smiles like she’s clued in anyway.
Some days, traffic crawls along so slowly that I have to break out the emergency snack stash I keep in the car. Fruit bars or a lone teething cookie. By the time we reach the next stoplight, she’s happily munching or asleep.
I notice the same cars each morning and afternoon, their drivers as familiar to me as neighbors at this point. I wonder about the people inside. Do they have a baby in the backseat listening to a Lyle Lovett album for the very first time too?
I imagine a tiny community of parents and children, each of us on our own little journey, connected by the same roads, the same traffic lights, the same shared struggle of making it work.
Sometimes I think about it more broadly. In a state as rural as Texas, countless parents are on even longer drives for childcare, and I can’t help but wonder how they fill those hours.
I know this is just a phase. We won’t be commuting forever, and one day I know I’m going to miss these drives and how my baby smiled at me from the backseat. But for now, I think my daughter knows every curve of Ranch Road 12 better than most grown-ups. When she does learn to talk, she’ll probably have plenty to say about it.
