School bus

I’m a pretty impatient driver. It seems like there are more and more people on the road these days that exist only to get in front of me and drive as slow as they possibly can. Knowing that, you would think that having to stop for school buses would infuriate me, but it doesn’t.
I never had kids. I dated women with children, and I have nieces, and I’m pretty good with them, at least in the role of an uncle or surrogate dad type person. Basically I get to do a lot of the fun stuff, and I miss out on a lot of the work and tedium that goes along with it. Maybe I would have been a good parent, maybe not.
Back to the school bus. It really makes me happy when I see kids get off the bus, with their parents there waiting for them. The kids usually come flying off the bus, happy for freedom, but also because they get to tell mom or dad all about their day. Their parents are usually just as happy, their faces light up when they see their kids. Sure, sometimes they are in a hurry, and you can see they had a bad day, but for the most part you just see pure joy when parent and child are reunited.
The other day, I saw a mom waiting at the corner with the family dog, a big white poodle, and I couldn’t tell who was more excited, the dog or the people. Last week I saw a father waiting by the side of the road in his pickup, and when the bus pulled up he rushed across the road to make sure his daughter didn’t try to cross herself. As they walked to the truck hand in hand, I could tell she was prattling on about all the things that happened that day in school. The pickup was one of those high four wheel drive types, and he had to lift her up to put her in the seat, and the whole time she just kept talking, not even noticing that she was now in the truck. Her father couldn’t help but smile the whole time.
I see them get on the bus in the morning too. Sometimes the parents are dressed for work, and seem a little stressed because they are in a rush. They still walk their kids to the bus door, and they all tell them a little something as they get on the bus and let go of their hand. Maybe it’s more instructions, be good today, study hard, eat your lunch and don’t trade it away this time. Probably just an “I love you”, or other little declaration to let them know that they care. Then the door closes and the bus pulls away, and they have to switch to people mode and join the adult world and all the things it entails that their children are still blissfully unaware of.
Some don’t have to work. Last week I saw a mom go through the ritual at the end of her driveway, and as the bus pulled away she slowly meandered back towards the house. Her body language seemed to say that everything was a little sadder for her now that her kid wouldn’t be running through the house until later that afternoon. I’m sure she has a very rich and full life, and a lot of responsibilities to keep her busy the rest of the day, but I think she doesn’t really come fully back to life until that moment when her child gets back off the bus and returns to her arms.
So yeah, I hate having to stop, and I hate being later than I already am to get wherever I’m going, but it’s still worth it when I see people just being people. Children and adults. Not left or right, not arguing about sports or politics or religion or whatever people are usually accosting each other about. It serves to remind me that most people have a lot of good in them, and a lot of love, even if they hide it well at times and act horribly to each other.
Also, whenever something happens like it did in Florida this week, it puts the school bus ritual in a whole new light for me. I wonder how many of those parents feel relief when they see their kid get off that bus. I imagine that they are so thankful, and they ache for those parents whose kids didn’t make it home. They might even feel some guilt for thanking the heavens that it wasn’t their kid, but still being thankful just the same. In the morning, it must flash through their minds that this might be the last time they see their children. Every day, again and again, to have to deal with that image and those thoughts. Perhaps they are superstitious like most of us are, and they silently chastise themselves for even thinking it for fear they might make their thoughts reality.
Then somehow, they have to put it out of their mind. They remind themselves of how slim the odds are it will be their kid. They reassure themselves that things like this don’t happen around here. Still, I’m sure that several times a day, some panic swells up from deep inside them and they wonder if their children are safe right now, or if they are hiding under a desk, praying that the gunshots in the distance don’t get closer. It’s hard enough being a parent without the ever present dread that some lunatic could shatter everything, and take your child from you at any moment, and you won’t be there to protect them, or even hold them as they slip away from this world. They might die alone, scared and bleeding out on a linoleum floor as others flee in panic.
And then the bus door opens, and your child steps out, and as they come running to hug you everything seems right in the world for at least another day.

Valentine's Day

This Valentine’s Day I might be alone, but I’ll get through it. I am comforted by the fact that there have been women that I have loved and that have loved me back so fiercely that I can still remember what it was like. I remember looks from across the room, and smiles that were just for me. I can recall passion and romance and sleeping with them pressed so tight up against me that you couldn’t fit a sheet between us. I remember skin on skin and hand in hand, and anticipation and the way they fell into me when I held them in my arms. I remember times they cried and told me that there with me was the only place they felt safe and like they weren’t alone in the world, and I understood because I felt the same way.
I also know how some of them punished and beat themselves up, continuing the work that others had started long before I came along. I remember how exquisitely my heart broke as I watched theirs break inside of them as well. I remember trying to hold onto them, to hold onto something that was already gone, and long nights spent alone again, wondering how I would go on.
On some of those nights, while the world seemed completely shattered, only to discover that it could shatter more, I would wonder where they were and hope they were safe and happy. I am not mad. I am not bitter. I am sad that either I wasn’t enough, or maybe nothing would ever be enough. I am heartbroken for them and I wish there were something I could do, that I could be a light that calls them out of the darkness, but it’s not to be.
Mostly I am grateful, because I know what love is. I have seen it, I have lived it, I have breathed it in and let it encompass me. No matter the pain involved, no matter all the tears and terror and time alone, I am still thankful for what they gave me.
Whatever this world might bring, I know I was loved, and I know that I will be loved again. Even though they might have been damaged, even though it didn’t work out, even if it tore my heart in two, I know that there were moments in my life where someone loved me more than they loved anything else in the world, and maybe that is enough.