Sometimes, Life Throws a Yellow Bus Your Way

04/15/16






When I was six years old, I had a fear of yellow school buses.


I used to hide in the back corner of my mother’s closet. Behind all of her dresses and old bridesmaid gowns, and on top of her hill of high heels, in hopes that she’d think she had a new addition to her closet rather than a child who needed to go to school.


“What’s wrong with the school bus, Kayla?” my mom would ask, pulling back each dress layer by layer, revealing my thick-rimmed glasses. Every week, I would react the same way. I would sit pouting in the closet, a jean jacket over my outfit for the day, a Tinkerbell backpack strapped to my shoulders.


“The bus isn’t red,” I’d say, tightening my grip around the red double-decker toy bus in my hands. “I want to go to school in one of these buses.”


My mother would smile and extend her hand into the closet to help pull me out. Reluctantly, I’d drag my feet behind her down the hallway and outside to the yellow beast’s open doors. Along the way, my mother would say things like, “Next time your dad goes to London, he’ll think twice about the presents he brings back” Or, “Tomorrow, your dad will be getting you ready for school.” Part of me hoped he would, because dad might let me stay in the closet.


I wouldn’t get on the yellow bus without my red bus in hand. My mother gave up trying to take it away from me after the first few days. Walking up those four giants bus steps, I’d pause and look back at my mother, with one last pleading look before I trudged into the vehicle and hid in the first seat. My mother would smile, wave, muster an optimistic “Have a great day, honey!” with an apologetic nod to the bus driver before returning inside.


During the 10 minute drive to Cumberland Elementary, I’d prop my red bus on my lap, and wipe away the tears hiding behind my child-sized bifocals.


Sixteen years later, the red bus has come and gone from my life. As a 21-year-old woman with one semester left in college, I still don’t like buses, but the fear I once associated with the bus has been replaced. These days, it feels like I’m afraid of a lot of things.


In a few months, I will be a certified secondary English teacher, and a Goshen College graduate. As I finish up my last semester of classes and begin my job search, I’ve made my own version of my mother’s closet inside of my head. What if I’m not cut out to teach? What if I can’t find a job right away? How will I make a living? The closer I’ve gotten to the end of my career as a student, the more afraid I am to be out on my own in the real world.


It makes me think back to the days I was just beginning school. I would hate my mom on school mornings for wanting me to get the “full experience” of going to school on my own. What if I didn’t make any friends? What if my teachers didn’t like me? When the bus pulled up to my street corner, I retreated to the place where I spent the first five years of my life making up my own adventures, hoping I could go back to the way things used to be. It’s funny to think that children are often considered naïve. I feel like six-year-old me had a pretty decent understanding of the down sides of growing up.


But another thing I’ve learned is that in time, and maybe with the help of a red double-decker toy bus, you can feel just enough comfort and confidence in yourself to take that step.


My comfort and confidence has developed over the past four years studying at Goshen College. I’ve had the privilege of working with professors who have challenged me to ask the questions that have altered my perspective of the world around me. I’ve found comfort and support in friends who have pursued their own passions. And I’ve had the opportunity to ground myself in many experiences in the classroom as a student and in field placements as a teacher in training. My time at Goshen College has allowed me to become a passionate learner and a servant leader in my discipline.


At 21, my red double-decker bus appeared in the form of two high school students I worked with in a spring field placement. I’ve had the privilege of working with them all semester, and on my last day observing in their classroom at Goshen High school, two things happened: one of my students, who had been below the 10th grade reading standards, improved over 100 points on his reading Lexile score, allowing him to meet his grade level for the first time in his high school career.


At the end of the class period, another one of my students told me he was moving to a different school next fall, hoping to play football. I wished him luck, and instead of simply thanking me, he furrowed his brow and said, “Ms. Rip, will you be a real life teacher next year?”


“Yes, indeed,” I said.


He frowned, thought for a moment and then asked me to promise him something. “Well when you are a real teacher, apply to Central. That way you could be my actual teacher before I graduate.”


Little moments like that remind me why I decided that teaching was a career I’d enjoy for the rest of my life. Although the thought of leaving student life behind me and taking on the role of a teacher is terrifying, I know that in time, the challenge won’t seem so scary and that my unique liberal arts education has prepared me to be successful.





When I have a classroom of my own, I’ll see many yellow buses on the first day of school dropping students off, and I’ll remember that I’ve come a long way from hiding in my mom’s closet when the bus pulled up to my house. I’ll think of all of the relationships I’ve established in my journey to teaching with students, professors, and classmates, and I’ll feel more ready than ever to begin a new adventure.

Tonic

This story was originally written for a fiction contest called "Glass". All submissions needed to be a maximum of 500 words long and had to involve glass of some kind. This is what I came up with. Enjoy!

                                                             Tonic

 “Where’ve you been?”

I hear the soft clink of glass meeting granite, and I stop immediately in front of the kitchen doorway.

Cringing, I turn my attention to dark figure hovering by the kitchen sink. She wasn’t facing me, but the light above the sink illuminated her face in the window before her. Disheveled brown hair framed her sunken face. Cold, dark eyes with bruise-like circles underneath glared at me from the glass. I turn my eyes away from the window to avoid her gaze, and lower them to meet the two bottles of Bombay Sapphire on the counter.

“I was studying with Jeannette for our A.P. Biology midterm,” I murmur. My eyes focus on the gin. The bottle closest to her was almost empty, and the second hadn’t been opened yet.

“Liar.”

She turns around clumsily, the glass in her hand spilling over onto the rug at her feet. Using her free hand to steady herself against the counter, she raises her glass pointing a finger toward me. More gin splatters to the floor. “You don’t think I can’t tell when you’re lying?! You were at Jason’s you little skank.”

I step forward “Mom,” I say calmly, reaching out toward her, “I told you this morning I had a study session. Give me the glass.”

She recoils back as if I’ve slapped her. She slams her glass into the sink and it shatters with a pop.

“You know what? You’re just like your father! You lie, you sneak around, and you’re stupid enough to think I don’t know about it!”  I stand there in silence, letting the words like jagged shards dig their way into my skin. I move toward the counter.

“Mom, you’re drunk,”

“And you’re a giant disappointment!” she spits at me.

 I explode.

I grab the almost empty bottle of Bombay by its neck, and bring it down hard on the counter’s edge. Blue glass fragments shatter in a starburst over the floor. The alcohol sprays in all directions, soaking the socks on my feet. I grimace as the cold liquid seeps through the gray cotton. My mother grabs the other bottle and pulls it tightly against her chest with a surprised whimper. Her eyes reflect nothing but intoxicated shame. I point what was left of the bottle at her.

“Dad’s gone! He left. Mom, look at me. Me? I’m still here.”

Without a word, she staggers out of the kitchen, hugging her gin.

Standing among the jagged edges of broken glass, I stare at the bottle neck in my trembling hand. I peer at the small, brown-haired girl in the window looking back at me. She has the same dark eyes as my mother, though her eyes aren’t defeated yet.

Rubber Rafts and Turtle-Catching Aunts

You lifted your squinted eyes from weedy patches

that crawled from the water like curling tentacles.

Squished into the corner, of the banana yellow boat

for one,

her foot rested inches from my nose.

Toes exposed and wiggly, knees knocked elbows, nets, and oars.

You found comfort hiding in the tangled maze of limbs,

while my hunched back squeezed a bubble

into the boat’s already-bloating butt.

“Hush child! They’ll hear you!

Look for the shells!”

Turtle shells, like yours, swirl green,

like segmented stained glass pentagon plates.

Tightened by the bun on the top of her head,

Aunt Denise’s magnifying eyes found critters

nobody could see.

Red-eared and wide-eyed,

quarter-sized you tumbled down

the hole-punched net.

.

Crawling over limbs with pinchy nails

Your baby beak and too-big head roamed

resting limbs and curved yellow walls.

Aunty D. shushed my tickled squeals as the turtle feet trekked over my toes,

and shunned you, brave enough to scale her leg.

She dropped us off on the soggy pier by the house.

I stood stiff and achy,

you wiggled between my fingers,

and she rowed away.

 Irritated and alone. 

My Cousin Shows His New Tattoo after Easter Dinner

“You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind;
and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we
return. For so did you ordain when you created me, saying,
"You are dust, and to dust you shall return." All of us go down
to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia,
alleluia, alleluia” -The Book of Common Prayer, 1928.

I peeled charcoaled red cotton away from your back,

exposing the angry, sunburnt skin

blotted with three tender bruises.

Dust to Dust addressed your sculpted shoulder blades,

in jagged calligraphy. 

You flinched while I circled my fingers

over each crossed t.

How much would you suffer to bear them?

I stole a wildflower from the Neighbor's garden

I stole a wildflower from the Neighbor’s garden

and plopped it into a terra cotta pot.

I packed in grainy, mineral salted soil

by the coffee spoon and demanded:

grow.

Grow away from the green zebra grass whipped yellow,

Thrive in the loamy earth encased by man-spun clay,

where no other flower can tickle your finger frond leaves;

away from the guarding shade of the cobblestone wall

put in place to keep intruders out.

It was when your green hands began to wrinkle that I leaned closer;

Your bright waxy luster replaced with liver-spotted grief,

an arthritic kink in the once proud, tall stem

your six white petals were eyes defeated;

wracked by indigo tears sputtering down like autumn’s frigid rain.

I returned you home then, wildflower

I planted you in the crater I stole you from,

restoring you once more to the zebra grass, the cobblestone wall,

and the neighbor, of course.

Your wrinkles darkened brown

like the coffee-stained spoon I killed you with.

The other flowers? They were crying too

while the zebra grass rustled a funeral hymn.

Creamed Spinach

The kitchen smelled of simmering cauliflower

 and soap suds.

As you hovered over the steaming pan,

I was elbow deep in citrus bubbles.

You pulled a blue ceramic bowl from the microwave

filled with steaming green goop.

My nose wrinkled

at its seaweedy strangeness.

I sloshed the sludge around with my spoon.

“Grandma, we really eat this stuff?”

You just stirred the cauliflower,

powdered blue t-shirt shaking with your shoulders.

“People find strength in the strangest things.”

I dipped my finger into the buttery slime,

pressed it to my tongue, and swallowed.

I smiled up at you with green leaflets,

When the cancer caught hold of your lungs,

that ceramic bowl sat steaming on the dinner table.

You were still Grandma,

and I was a green giant.

When its tendrils twined their way into your brain,

I saw the filmy soap suds in your clouded vision.

The ceramic bowl lay empty in the cupboard

gathering dust.

To the Figures in Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone

Turn around.

You beckon in desperation.

You long to move before them,

to be at their feet,

but the soil sucks you down,

suffocating you.

Hold your breath,

and wait—

Don’t ignore the bow and curve

of the foamy white-capped waves.

With anxious inhalations,

the water exhales quiet kisses along the shore.

Shhh, shhh, shhh

 it calls for the white in your eyes

to meet the white and yellow in its waves.

Look.

The homes along the opposite shore

leak vibrant orange yellow,

like flowerpots overflowing with sun-infused rain.

Look.

The night sky sporadically salted with stars

radiates a pale yellow of its own

among the swirling navy blues, ceruleans,

and shades of begrudging black.

Lights trickle down and dance on nature’s mirror

reflecting night’s iridescent face.

Look.

Two wooden ships float silently on my lips.

You both stand backs turned.

Admiring

something just out of        

Reach.