On Mondays and Thursdays, while Wee Babe is at school, I tend to run errands and clean house. It isn't that I can't accomplish these tasks with her because she demands too much of my time and energy. Not at all. In fact, Babe is a great help when it comes to laundry or grocery shopping, and she seems to love helping Mum. No, the reason I try to squeeze the majority of my tasks into those two days is that I would rather hang out and enjoy her company than work when she is home with me.

Mondays and Thursdays are also the days I schedule most of my appointments (like my visits with Therapy Dude), as well as helping Best Girlfriend Lisa get to whatever appointments she might have scheduled. You see, Lisa is sans auto. Major bummer.

Although, not for too much longer...

For the last six years, Lisa has been fighting with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). For what? To be allowed to apply for a driver's license in our home state. Yes, six years this battle's been waged, and Lisa has won, finally. Pure stubbornness always wins over bureaucratic ineptitude, don't ya know?

Inept? Yes. The DMV is the epitome of inept. A fine example of "they broke the mold when..."

Certainly, the DMV's initial concern was a valid one. Lisa suffered petit mal epileptic seizures as a young girl. So what that she hadn't had one in nigh to a decade when, at 17, she first applied for her driving permit, right? Should be simple enough to assuage their concerns. Just a note from Lisa's family doctor... Wrong. Lisa had to see a doctor the DMV selected. Several years and as many EEG's and stress-tests later, Lisa obtained the signature she needed, and sent the paperwork off to the DMV.

And waited.

And waited.

And they lost her paperwork. No, not just her paperwork. They lost her entire file.

I was there when Lisa learned this little tidbit. I thought she was going to reach through the phone and tear the woman's head clean off. "You did what?" Lisa demanded, standing up and beginning to pace the room. "Lost? What exactly does that mean, 'lost?'"

"Oh, boy, here it comes," I mumbled, and grimaced at Lisa.

She rolled her eyes at me, and continued speaking to the DMV lady. "Well, I tell you what, I can have a copy faxed down to you right now, but I'd really like to know what the status is on this application, and when you expect to have it processed. I've been calling, long distance, every week for the last 12 weeks, and this is beyond ridiculous."

I suppose the woman just wanted to be rid of Lisa and her refusal to kowtow, tail tucked neatly between her legs, awestruck and dumbed by the mighty governmental institution that is the Department of Motor Vehicles. She pushed the application through and bid Lisa a good day.

Golden Rule #11 (amended): Thou shalt not mess with the IRS or the DMV... Unless thy name be Lisa.

Monday afternoon, I drove Lisa to the local DMV office where she took her written exam. Did I mention inept? You will never fully grasp the meaning, the concept at the heart of the word itself, until you stand in queue at the DMV. A maze of rope barriers, teeming with sweaty, stinking people, snaked its way across the polished floor. Where the ropes ended, the masses stood in a vaguely discernable line that undulated this way and that, stretching out to the far wall, curving back on itself... To the door. At the head of the line — the goal, the glory! — bedraggled parties waited, one after the other, to be served by one of three flunkies working the counter that day.

So many of us. We really should have staged a coup.

Now Wee Babe was in school, as was Lisa's five-year-old daughter. However, Bronwyn, Lisa's roommate's kiddo, was in our care. And Bronwyn found the local DMV office much to her disliking. I think it's one of the few times I've found myself in compleat agreement with a 20-month-old.

Bronwyn and I left Lisa for the comfort (?!) of the plastic chairs lining the walls of the outer lobby. Wedged between two startlingly large pieces of Trailer Trash, the little one and I practised swinging our legs and singing The ABC Song. Bronwyn was restless, though, and the second time she began to slide off her seat and make for the crowd...

I failed to catch her. She was just starting to fall. I was reaching for her. My fingers were just curling around her narrow shoulders, but I missed. And Bronwyn went down. Face first. Hard. She split her lip on the tiled floor. You'd have thought I was beating the poor child by the nasty glares I received from any and everyone within sight. My face went hot, no doubt cycling through every shade in the red family. How humiliating! I mean, there I was, a mum myself, entrusted with the child of a friend, and what did I do? Let her fall and bust her lip open. Believe me, I felt like bursting into tears and wailing every bit as loud as Bronwyn, who, by the way, was so massively angry with me that she bucked in my arms, kicked me squarely on each kneecap, and arched her back. There was no way I could get up with her flailing around as she was, and no way that she'd stand on her own so that I might get up. In fact, I nearly dropped her sitting as I was.

Kelly, a mutual friend of Lisa's and mine, appeared before me. She lifted Bronwyn from my lap and carried her to the restroom.

I sat for several minutes, gazing in horror at the blood on my hands. I am a wretched excuse for a mother, I thought. How could I have let her fall like that? How dare I presume to protect my own kid, when I can't even do right by someone else's? Finally, though, that other voice piped up. Quit your sad-sackety, pity-party garbage, it said. Get your narrow butt up out of that chair, go to the bathroom, wash your hands, and see how Bronwyn is.

So, I did. And Bronwyn was fine. She'd stopped crying (and stopped bleeding) by the time I got to the bathroom. I hugged her and told her I was sorry that she had fallen down, and what a bummer that is.

It was then I understood, or began to understand, a difference between Bronwyn and Wee Babe that had been puzzling me for some time. Bronwyn had reacted as any child might: kicking and punching, screaming and wriggling. Wee Babe has never done anything like that with me. Now, yes, you can chalk a good lot of that up to their contrasting personalities, the manner in which they are being raised respectively, their individual experiences, and so forth. But there's more to it than that. It's something minutely dissimilar deep within the two kiddos. Something rather hazy and difficult to pin down, even when you've got them both in front of you to observe. I think I know what it is, or a part of it, at least. Wee Babe somehow knows that Mum is prone to full-blown panic, system overload shutdown. Bronwyn has little way of knowing that.

Sometime in the middle of it all, I sprinted out to the car, sped across town, and picked up Lisa's daughter. Now, Lauren and Bronwyn are about the strongest-willed girls I've ever encountered (yes, that includes myself). To say they don't necessarily get along, is, well, stretching my Aquarius-Rising diplomacy a bit thin. We, the adults (er, no comment from the peanut gallery, thankyouverymuch), make do, and a good lot of "play nice, ladies" can be heard shouted from the kitchen to the den (or, in this case, from the front seat to the back) when the two are together.

I don't think Wee Babe is quite sure what to make of them. I mean to say, she gets on fine with one or the other. But go threesome on the kids, and Babe is often found standing aside, staring at the others with the queerest expression on her delicate little face. I suppose it's some mix of fright and disgust, but I'm not sure. You see, and you need to know, Wee Babe is unbelievably sensitive. Loud noises, tall men, jerky motions, anything extreme, really, and you're sure to see her waterworks kick on.

A real Marilyn I've got. Honest to god.

Well, post-DMV (did it ever truly end?), we went to lunch at Nameless Family Sitdown Restaurant (read: National Grease-Pit Chain). I swear, the two kids bickered (though, not as vehemently as I've seen) the entire time we were there. I almost laughed when I remembered a story Lisa had told me so many times. Seems she and her brother fought so horribly as children, their father had stuck masking tape right up the centre of the rear car seat, and said that should either one of them cross the tape, there'd be holy hell to pay. I wondered if I had any masking tape in the trunk of the car. This, of course, was what nearly caused me to laugh right out loud. I didn't think anyone at the table, or the neighbouring ones, would appreciate my wit-of-the- moment, so I stifled it.

I dropped them all off at Lisa's house, and played Racecar Mama all the way back across town, to Babe's preschool. Have I mentioned that they nail you for $2 or $3 per each minute after 6pm that you are late? My darlin' was just winding up for a "Where's my Mummy?!" tantrum when I breezed through the doors. It was 5.52.

And I was exhausted. My head pounding. But I was so... grateful? Relieved? ... to be back in the company of my own kiddo. I collapsed on the couch when we arrived home.

Wee Babe hovered over me, her bitty lips pursed into a frown, her auburn brows knitted together so furiously that plump, doughy folds formed in her peachy skin. "Mummy is sick," she declared, petting my hand. "Ohhhh, Mummy. Need blanket. Need dolly. Need lovies."

Yes, I do. Thanks, Babe.