Aug 13 2009
Back to School Memories
Dear Jay,
My youngest started high school this week. Yes, I’m getting old, but my memories today are from when I was much younger. Way back when I had my own first days of school.
As I drove him to school and having to run my air conditioner, I remembered all those mornings when I would have to rush out to wait on the bus. We had a long drive way so waiting at the door until we saw the bus was not an option. We had a great bus driver but even I knew better than to expect her to wait on me just so I could stay warm or dry.
Every morning we would wait very impatiently at the end of our drive way. If no cars were coming, we sometimes would run circles around the mail box. For the life of me, I can’t recall why. Boredom, I suppose. Those times were rare though. We lived on a major highway so there was usually always traffic.
“Big trucks” or “eighteen wheelers” as we called them would rush past us hauling coal. Sometimes chunks would fall off and a few even hit us from time to time. We didn’t mind that as much as we did the wind from them. We had to listen to our mom complain about how difficult our hair was to fix in the first place. We hoped and prayed that she wouldn’t look out and see how we looked after the first five or six trucks blew past us. On picture day, we knew to stand as far back as we could. That one day, hearing the bus drivers wrath was much easier to deal with than our mom complaining because our hair was so messed up for our pictures.
As fall turned into winter, the thermostat would dip low. Waiting on the bus was definitely not fun. We would run in place just to try to keep warm. On those days, as soon as we heard a truck, we would take off running backwards. If we ever had a truck coming when the bus was coming, the mere thought of the wind would make us shiver long before we felt the “breeze” that could blast through the heaviest of coats.
Waiting on the bus was filled with a lot of fun as well as a few challenges. We made it through and I know that my son could too. I may be cheating him out of some fond memories of waiting on the bus like I had, but I so enjoy the new memories I’m making. The drive to school is often filled with my asking a question, then repeating it when he realizes I’m talking and takes out the earphones, but it also has some special moments. You know those that happen so seldom that you almost forget that they exist. Those few moments when you know that your child truly knows how much you care about him. Those moments are worth his not getting to experience the memories of waiting on the bus. Hopefully, these memories will one day mean something to him.
