I suppose it’s always easier to see it in others when you’ve worn the same face they are wearing. He was waiting for the school bus. Clearly it was the first day. All the clues were there. Just after Labor Day. His hair parted and combed. Book bag empty and pristine. Clothing ironed. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. Clearly he had been standing on the sidewalk for a while. Early on this first morning. He turned his head from side to side. Quickly, as if he could have missed a glimpse of the big yellow wheeled beast in mid turn.
Empathy is a powerful force. I’m certain he had a lump in his throat, because I could feel one in mine.
It’s funny how uncertainty works. Because I didn’t begin that way. My first days of school I easily flung myself out to the end of our driveway. Wet hair in the wind. Racing to a bus I knew would be there. A bus I knew would wait for my scurry. A bus I knew , if I were running really late, would go down the road, pick up the wet-headed Norton girls and turn around and stop for me again.
I suppose it was my father leaving that rolled uncertainty, like a river, into everything I had known for sure. I went earlier to the bus stop. Would it be there? On time? Would I trip? Would it know that I needed it to pick me up, now more than ever?
Because it did, every day. Because my mother was as reliable as that big, yellow bus. Because she flung her doors wide open for me. Waited for me. I became certain again. I stood strong on two legs. Filled with the knowledge that things, people, could be counted on.
I slowed down long enough yesterday to tell the young boy, “It’s coming.” He smiled. We both stepped into the certainty of the day.
