Bus Number 63

About a week ago, my husband and I were going out to enjoy our evening together. As we waited at a traffic light, I saw a school bus drive up past us a few lanes over. It was bus number 63.

Bus 63

I rode this bus as a child.

When I was in fourth grade, they offered all of us in the top math class to take the fifth grade diagnostic test to see how well we would score. Three of us scored above 85 I believe on the fifth grade test, which was pretty impressive to be well above passing for the grade higher. The three of us were placed in a fifth grade math class for the rest of the year. Although I could handle it, math class was definitely a challenge that year.

We moved the summer after fourth grade. It was kind of unexpected and on the down low. I never really said goodbye to my friends...kind of slipped away silently. It was also just 15 minutes down the street. Unfortunately, that was enough for me to need to switch schools even though I was in the same district. When I started school that fall, they just gave me the normal schedule for a fifth grader. I was in a fifth grade math class, and it was boring. I don't remember who initiated or what instigated the change, but someone said something to the school which notified them I'd already taken a year of fifth grade math. After some special arrangements were made, I had a personal bus come pick me up at the elementary school about 2 pm everyday and drive me to the middle school for 7th period which was from about 2:40 pm to 3:30 pm. Just for the record, if you think 7 hours of school is long, I endured almost 8 hour school days for an entire year as a fifth grader, starting at 7:45 as an elementary student and ending at 3:30 as a middle school student.

I rode bus number 63. The driver was Mr. Bill. Almost everyday, he would pull the bus up the front of the school, I would notify the secretary that I was leaving, and then hop on to head off to the middle school. He would talk to me and tell me stories, and I would mostly listen as a shy 11 year old. It's from him that I learned about diamond mines in Arkansas. He was shocked I could not recognize Christina Aguilera or Britney Spears in pictures (because I'm pretty sure most 11-year-old girls at the time probably idolized them...). He was the one who told me about the neighborhood being built at the corner of two streets we used to drive by and how there were going to be approximately 200 homes. That neighborhood is now completely built up and over 10 years old. He always had his bus decorated for some occasion or with pictures and passed out candy to all his riders during the holidays, including me. I always got first dibs.

Sometimes, he would have other routes to drive and I would have other buses arranged to pick me up. Those drivers were never quite the same. They just picked me up and dropped me off. I also had to act as a GPS for them when they didn't know the route. So I definitely knew my directions as a child for all the necessary places - like how to get to my next class which happened to be at a different school.

I didn't see Mr. Bill very much after fifth grade. He drove a route for my middle school, (the same school he dropped me off at), but I didn't ride it. There was no bus to our house at the time because we were only 1.8 miles from the school. Sometimes he would see my brother and me walking home because we walked in the same direction his bus pulled out toward, and he would wave at me with both hands away from the steering wheel with big wide eyes and a goofy smile. 

I haven't seen him in almost 15 years now. Last I heard, he cut his long, wavy, red-orange hair and was moving because he got offered an office job. I was happy for him, but I knew his kids would miss him. He was one of the happiest and kindest people.

But I saw his bus.

The 14th Year

When I was 13, I wrote my mother a letter. In this letter I told her my secrets I'd never said aloud including my 13-year-old boy problems. Mothers have intuition and know things, but I'm sure she would have rather I told her myself. In this letter, I also told her about all the big important events in my life that were coming in the future: learning how to drive, high school graduation, college life, college graduation, getting a job, getting engaged, getting married, buying a house, and having kids. And I told her how hard it would be to experience all these life events knowing that she wouldn't be there to see and experience them with me. I wrote this letter and put it in her casket the night of her viewing, the Wednesday after she died, the last time I ever physically saw her, even though she didn't look anything like the way I remembered her as my mother.

That was 13 years ago. As I sit on the floor of my bedroom in my own house nostalgically reminiscing over how long ago it was and how short the time has felt, I realize I've experienced almost everything I knew she was going to miss. My dad taught me how to drive in a church parking lot down the street from where we lived on Saturday mornings, and I still drive the same car. I graduated from high school the best I knew how, structuring my own schedule and motivating myself to work. No Ivy League scholar here, but I completed my homework, studied for my tests, and kept my integrity. I breezed through college in three years, made new friends, had ups and downs, and graduated in what felt like a whirlwind. I accepted my first full-time job teaching overseas and moved myself and four bags of belongings halfway across the world for a year.

After moving back, I started dating, got engaged, and got married. The wedding was hard without her. She wasn't the one who came dress shopping with me. She wasn't at the wedding. And she's never met my husband. He and I bought a house together, and she's never seen it. I'm sure she would have hated it and told us over and over again not to buy it. Because that's who my mother was and what she would have said - she would have seen all the ugliness and all the work and money involved and said, "No. Don't buy it." It's true. It was ugly. If you've ever seen the house before or pictures of it, you'll know. It was bad. Not Fixer Upper bad, but bad enough to drive away most sane people. BUT. It gave us the opportunity to leave our own mark, renovate, and call it our own.

Today is extra special in a sad way. My 13 short years with her will always remain 13 short years. I've remembered every year on this day how many years have passed since she died. Today is the beginning of my 14th year without her. This number has never exceeded the number of years I had with her, but now it does, and it always will. It's terrifying and kind of scary to know at such a young age, I've already lived half my life without my mother.

I met a violin teacher this year and she asked me to be her pianist for her student recital. I was happy to take the job and play for her kids. At one of the rehearsals for her recital, she brought her 2.5 year old daughter. I was able to play with her between practices and also watched her by the car when her mom forgot her purse with the keys inside the building and had to retrieve them. When she came back, she said to me, "You would make a really good mother." That meant a lot considering she'd only interacted with me about three times in total.

Now there are no buns warming in the oven yet, and I wouldn't conceal something so exciting into such bittersweet reminiscing. But it's always been my fear. And even greater than the fear of being an unprepared and inadequate mother myself is the fear of my children never knowing their maternal grandmother. What will that be like? I don't know.

I love my life. I really do. I catch myself every now and then feeling the awe and wondering how life became so good for me with a wonderful job, amazing husband, and a beautiful home. Because I remember what it was like to live in constant pain and grief. I remember what it was like to be depressed and feel the never ending sadness from heartaches, just dragging my feet to make it through a day at a time. And I don't feel that anymore. I haven't felt it in many, many years. But I still miss my mother.