When I started my first freshy-faced adult job in downtown Chicago, I took the bus back and forth. I walked to the end of the street where the bus would screech to a stop, choke exhaust out the back end, and wait for me to board before traveling on to the next stop. My friend, Pat, was already on board and we’d sit next to each other towards the back and on the right.
The same people were on the bus every day – always occupying the same spot. For as much time as we spent together there was little conversation except when traffic on the Calumet Expressway was backed up merging onto the Dan Ryan. Stopped still with a sea of red lights ahead of us, the bus driver would shout, “WHO WANTS TO TAKE THE SKYWAY???” We’d shout back an enthusiastic WE DO and his cap would be passed down one row of the bus and up the other so his passengers could fill it with spare change to cover the cost of the toll.
At the front of the bus sitting on benches facing the aisle were two regulars. One of them I knew – he was in my social studies class in high school. There were a couple of occasions during that class when he would pitch forward in his desk, rock back and forth, and moan. It was a very scary thing to witness, mainly because nobody knew what was happening. The teacher would stand beside him until it was over and years later I would find out that he had epilepsy. After high school he went to work at the local donut shop. He lost both his hands to burns when they were plunged into a fryer of hot oil when he was having a seizure. It wasn’t until I started taking the bus, him sitting in front with his prosthetic hands (which at the time were two silver hooks), that I found out what happened which to this day has not lost its horrifying effect. I got accustomed to seeing him every day and in time his hands ended up being the least remarkable thing about him. It was his booming laugh that frequently filled our quiet bus that separated him from everybody else.
Next to him was a guy who was probably in his early thirties. In retrospect he seemed to be on the spectrum which at the time wasn’t something anyone knew much about. Because he sat in front he was in charge of the hat passing for the toll – making sure it made its rounds and there was something to give the bus driver. If that job wasn’t required, if we were moving at a decent clip during the morning rush hour, he’d keep watch over his fellow passengers the entirety of the ride. What that meant was that he’d watch them sleep, and when their head bobbed forward or off to the side, he’d get up and lean their head back so they would be more comfortable and wouldn’t wake up with a stiff neck. Sometimes he only needed to do it once, other times over and over. This tended to startle people but then they’d go right back to sleep and he’d go right back to monitoring the situation. It was odd to say the least but nobody ever complained, got mad at him, or asked him to stop.
Last week for a die-hard liberal like myself and millions of others, was a blow to the knees. Finally, I thought, this country would elect a woman president like so many other countries had done decades before. I woke up at four a.m. the next day and found out otherwise and haven’t stopped feeling sick since. Added to that was something that happened at work that had me teetering between rage and a super-sized helping of rage. On another week I might have been able to shrug it off but instead it seemed like a heaping pile of disappointment and unfairness that was on the verge of collapse.
I was barely managing to hold it together until I spent a little too much time online the day after the election where a widow who used fitness to overcome her grief and create a business wrote, “Tell me what you’re grateful for today.” Were we really supposed to sunny-side-up a felon as our president? Start counting our blessings less than 24 hours later? There was no better example of why in the midst of loss or pain, people shut down. Why it is so much easier to say nothing than to pretend that things are fine. Why every time someone saw me after Mark died and said I looked great I’d say everything was a-ok when it felt like my heart was dangling from a string tied to my back belt loop and bouncing off the ground with a trail of blood following it. “Oh that thing,” I would say, “that’s the real reason I look so good. My heart’s been cut out of me and so I’m much lighter. I mean the blood isn’t appealing but do you like my new outfit?” Meanwhile, despite how I looked everything in my life had gone to complete shit.
I’m feeling a lot like that again and it’s not a healthy place to linger. I don’t like how loud hate seems to be, especially my own. So I’ve taken a leave of absence from the news which may be permanent, went back to reading at night, and loaded an audiobook from the library to listen to when I’m out walking. I’ve also been thinking a lot about those two guys from years ago who were on my bus every day – joyful warriors of the morning shift. I desperately could use the laugh of one to lighten my soul and for the other to gently push my weary head back so I can rest before the work starts again.
