never say never

A scenario presented itself to us last night that was supposed to be one of the toughest we'd have to deal with. All of the factors adding up to an almost-perfect storm. First, we did not have the car and we didn't have access to it because it was in use by our car-share buddies. Second, Estelle was sick. Third, it wasn't an ambulance-calling emergency, but she really needed to go to the doctor at some point. I called urgent care and they advised bringing her in, so I made the appointment for the 8:00 pm time slot that they had available. What were my options? Hop the bus with a sick kid at night and not come home until way late? Alison and Eddie, our neighbors who are supposed to be our backup people, were gone. As I was trying to figure out an alternative, it occured to me that both of our carseats were in the shared car. Damn.

As luck would have it, we are surrounded by a wonderful community of people that we are blessed enough to call friends. Other neighbors of ours, Heather and Chris, were just coming back into town from a long weekend. I was keeping an eye on a couple of things for them, so I had a key to their house. A phone call to them was all it took to secure one of their spare cars, and I had forgotten about an extra old car seat still gathering dust in the garage. Wonderful oh wonderful Jeremy gave up his evening to take Estelle to the Dr. Offical diagnosis - secondary ear infection. The joys of parenting.

This experience taught me, I think, that we should put our fears about this to the side. This was almost the worst of the worst that could happen being without a car 100% of the time, and it was no big deal. If it were truly an emergency, and ambulance would be the only way to go, regardless if we had a car or not. In every other case, I can't think of any time where we wouldn't be able to make it work thanks to loving friends, family and neighbors. We couldn't do it without them!