thirty-nine memories (10)

Memory #10: Bus Race

I do not think she liked me; in fact, she did not even stop at our driveway to pick me up each morning. Instead, she stopped directly in front of the neighbor’s drive across the street—still in front of our property, yes. But it meant in winter or in wet that I had a longer, snowier or muddier, walk to the school bus.

And she did not like to have to honk the horn if I was not out waiting for the bus. Truth be told, she did have to honk the horn on many occasions because I was not out waiting in the dark or the rain or the snow or the whatever. I could tell by her look and often by her snide comments—“running late today, eh”—that I was not her most beloved passenger.

I remember feeling shamed by her more than once for making her wait and making our bus a little later than our usual fifteen minutes early arrival.

The bus drivers would talk to one another on CB radio on the way into Wakarusa Elementary and Middle School, and I knew of what they spoke. They were racing. Who would be the first to arrive at the school, and then to wait triumphantly as the other buses slowly pulled in ingloriously behind. We weren’t allowed off the bus until the school doors were opened at 7:50 a.m. I do not know why—perhaps in those days it was thought better to inhale diesel fumes than fresh air. So there we sat.

I remember my bus driver. I remember that what she seemed to care about most was beating her husband, another bus driver, to the finish line at the school. And I remember that once we got there, we were made to sit in the bus and wait for the doors to open. I remember thinking the whole thing absurd. I remember feeling that I was simply an obstacle—a barrier, an annoying burden—to her on her daily quest to get to school before all the other buses arrived. I remember.

Every trip is a quest, and the real purpose of a quest is always the acquisition of self-knowledge. Nothing in my experience of being an obstacle on my bus driver’s quest would lead me to believe that she ever had any sort of epiphany about the way she treated the cargo she delivered each morn. And yet, in my more compassionate moments, many years later, I trust that at some point before she retired and then “retired” that her eyes were opened and that she did see the light.

When it some day comes to send my Sydney on a school bus in the cold dark Baugo township morning, rest assured that her bus driver will know that my Sydney is not an obstacle—is most certainly not a mere barrier or annoying burden—to him or her winning a bus race to the doors of the elementary school. Her cargo is my treasure.

Bless you, Lorna, my bus driver, wherever you may be.