American Ritual

Life on the bus

Seven-o-three arrives early for a 5-year-old. That’s when the bus to kindergarten stops at the corner down the street. This time of year, the sky is a brightening cerulean blue, a soulful color spanning the gap between night and morning. Often enough, the moon is up, and nearby is Venus, bright as my daughter’s eyes staring up. The solar system hanging in her room—painted Styrofoam and fishing line—pales in comparison to this show. Even little pink Mars is visible and, as my daughter points out, is only a hands-width away from the half-moon.

“No fair!” she says, as she often does when beginning a diatribe about some injustice or other. “I want to jump on the moon so I can jump higher than our house.”

Yes, I agree with her, it would be a blast to leap barely tethered by gravity. I start to explain that there is less gravity on the moon … blah, blah, blah … but then realize, of course she knows that, and I just sound like a pedantic parent sucking the romance out of moon walking.

We are lucky in that Idaho has spectacular night skies, skies that make you feel like you are actually in the universe, maybe a speck, but nonetheless a speck among and connected to billions of suns swirling about. It’s a strange experience to feel connected to something so amorphous, but it’s undeniable and surprising solace for those of us wandering the earth.

The walk to the bus stop is a family event: my wife, dog, coffee, backpack, sometimes visiting friends or older siblings home for a spell. In the semi-darkness, it feels like we’re on an adventure, albeit only a hundred yards long. This morning the adventure is heightened by the fact that there is a bear cub in the neighborhood. A little friend arrives, two more parents, two more little friends, two more parents, one more dog. The neighbor by the bus stop turns on her porch light, even though her kids have long since outgrown this bus stop. And suddenly, it is a morning party. Kids are playing flashlight tag, dogs are checking each other out, parents trade banter about hunting adventures, the carpool to ballet and all the sweetness that entails. It is a happy time—a favorite moment of the day—one that I never would have seen coming a year ago.

For the most part, I took the bus when I was a kid. Our bus driver was named Joe, and we all thought he had to be a biker—a Hell’s Angel, or something equally dangerous and romantic. This assumption was based on the fact that Joe had a Fu Manchu moustache, and, I think, a tattoo. In those days, tattoos were a quite a bit rarer than today and reserved for those on the fringes of suburban Californian life. Of course, as I remember it, Joe was the nicest guy in the world, even if he had a secret and imaginary life as a guy who stole televisions and broke kneecaps, or whatever biker gangs did back then.

I also remember that the bus ride was warm and bumpy, filled with excited voices and enough energy to power the world. On good days we could sit with our closest friends, but sometimes that wasn’t possible. Then we were forced to sit with kids we didn’t know as well, or who were a little older or younger. I have to believe that this kind of random social engineering was good for all of us.

There were also occasions when my best friend’s older brother drove us. This happened in a giant station wagon with a passel of older friends of the brother. My buddy and I were relegated to what you might call a suicide seat in the very back. The seat faced backwards out the rear of the car, had no seatbelts and for both reasons thrilled us. Further adding to the excitement was the fact that the car floor was rusted out in spots near our feet, so we could watch the pavement scream by below us. I doubt our parents really comprehended the reality of the carpool situation, but it solved a problem for them, and, in those days, there was less worry in the world, on all fronts. Good or bad, we got by without a hitch.

Certainly, school buses are slow, loud, and usually belch out diesel exhaust. A 4-mile drive can take 40 minutes. But it’s time well spent. Probably the best time. It’s where friendships are formed, truths worked out. The first tenuous strands of community begin to weave together. The world inside those yellow tin cans exists unto itself. There is no war, no political strife, no monkeypox or heartache. The currency of that world is almost exclusively laughter.

As I watch my daughter and her friend waving in the window, the bus roars away. I know what their conversation will be because my daughter has rehearsed it with me earlier. There will be the usual declarative, “No fair!” Then they will proceed to discuss how it’s not fair that boys need only take six discrete actions in going to the bathroom, whereas girls have to take eight. My daughter will itemize the steps for her friend as a way to prove the point. By the time they arrive at school, however, they will have come to terms with the inherent disparity of the sexes. They will be warm and safe and happy. School will begin, and soon the world will get more complicated in both good and bad ways. That not withstanding, I am convinced the joy and simplicity of these early bus rides will carry them far beyond all this.