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Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth

Jay and Philip have written about the poor 5-year old girl who was left in the middle of nowhere because the bus driver was at the end of the route and kicked her off the bus. I showed the story to my husband, we held each other's hand, thought of our son and of that little girl and of all the little kids. We shivered in fear. We both felt all the things Philip and Jay wrote so eloquently. When I was 4, I too got on the wrong bus. The driver took me back to the school and the teacher called my house. My grandmother came and got me. This is one of those "walked a mile, uphill, each way" stories. We were living at the edge of a penninsula and making my way TO school took all the courage I possessed. To get to the school bus, I walked out of my grandparents house:

1. Up the gravel drive onto the paved drive
2. Up the paved drive next to the marsh about a quarter mile
3. Turn right at the mess of mailboxes at the top of the drive
4. Find the walking path in the grass between the 2 driveways at the end of the cul-de-sac
5. Walk through the woods up the hill about 100 yards
6. Then it would open to a house on a hill, and a golden hay-filled yard like the one in Christina's World, a painting by Andrew Wyeth that my mom kept over the fireplace. At the top of that hill, I felt safe. I would open my arms and run through the hay down to the bottom where a new road dead-ended
7. Follow the road (along the water line) about 50 yards to the intersection
8. That's where the bus picked me up. In front of the white house with another kid

(You don't even want to know the directions to getting TO the house, they'd take all day to write and included "Go right at the fork in the road past where Whirly the dog used to be".)

But even at 4 and 5 years old, I could and did make my way to that far-off bus stop.

It was getting back on the bus at the end of the day that was impossible. I got lost in the horde of exiting children. I fought not to get flattened. I tried not to wet myself in sheer terror in the crowd.

And I REALLY did try to identify my number bus. But you know what? THEY ALL LOOK THE SAME. No shit. So I'd miss the bus. After the first time, I learned to just turn around and go back into the building. No more joy rides to nowhere. The school would call home. It drove my poor Grandmother batty. She, in turn, drove my mother batty. It was all good in our little circle of life. We were living together, generations of women in anxious proximity, in a tiny coastal town on Cape Ann, in Massachusetts. It was rough winds and tidal charts; it was thick sweaters while reading by the thin sunlight. It was the kindness of tired bus drivers and teachers, who probably understood that a 4-year-old is going to make many, many mistakes. Who probably knew my grandparents, and my parents, and our neighbors as well. It was the frustrated patience of a grandmother who was set in her ways but set them aside to make room for family. It was the compassion of my mother, who tried to broker peace around a difficult situation living in a borrowed home. It was everyone, under stress, trying to do the right thing by each other. Back when people, as a rule, tried to do the right thing by each other.

Back when, it seems, dinosaurs ruled the Earth and I was young.