2001-11-03-3:15 p.m.

Megan got out of school early one day and we all got in the car and picked her up. We were too early to get Abby from college, but not early enough to go home first, so we had to kill some time.

Why is it that, when you're in a hurry to get somewhere, you always look around longingly at all the places you never get to go, or you can think of lots of things you never have time to do? But when you have a little extra time you're suddenly thrown off balance. You can't think straight. There is no urgency to be anywhere, so you have no direction, no reason to be alive. Why is that?

I asked the kids, "What are we going to do for twenty minutes?"

"Go see the water tower," Becky said. She's really into water towers lately. We read about them in her Science book when she was learning about water pressure and I guess that's something that stuck fairly well.

No one else had suggestions that were any more exciting than that, so we headed for the water tower near the college. We found it pretty easily, I mean, it is a water tower, and the kids were all embarrassingly excited and happy when I actually parked in front of it. "We can get out?" they asked.

I looked at my watch. Seventeen minutes to go. "Sure."

They were like zoo animals and the gates of their cages had suddenly swung open. They didn't really know if they should leave or not. But they did. I let them all get out and tramp around that water tower. It had a huge fence around it, so they couldn't touch it or anything, but they did get to see it up close. We all took turns using my sunglasses to look up at the top. Twice. With five kids that's a lot of sunglasses passing.

It's amazing how much pleasure a kid can get from looking at a water tower.

We were getting back in the car and I saw Benjamin watching me. When you're a mom you learn to know the difference between being looked at and being watched. Benjamin was slowly climbing in and watching me very carefully the whole time. I know what that means. He was looking for a reaction so he could tell if I'd noticed what he was doing. He hasn't quite reached the age of being sneaky - he still telegraphs: "I'm doing something I'm not supposed to do. Are you going to catch me?"

I saw the stick in his hand. It was a pretty good stick. Long, but not too long to fit easily into the car, thick and strong, but not too heavy. And I could tell by the intensity of his watching that he really wanted to keep it.

So I pretended not to notice. "Get in the car. It's time to get Abby." He quickly shut the door. We'd killed all the time we had to kill, but, considering that those twenty minutes were filled with life and wonder for my children, I really don't think we killed them at all.

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