“This is your fifteen minute warning,” Clare joked in an announcer’s voice. “Will all kindergartners who have their first day of school today please finish up their pancakes now.”
“OK, Mommy!” I said shoving a fork-full of food into my mouth.
“I said ‘Kindergartners,’” Clare insisted coming closer to my face. “Not Daddy’s who belong in Kindergarten!” She stuck her tongue out at me and turned to walk away.
I grabbed her around the stomach and pulled her onto my lap. “Not so fast.” My daughter giggled off to my right while she watched her mother and I joke around with each other. “What about Mommy’s of Kindergartners? When do they get to eat.”
“Well,” Clare replied turning her head towards my face. “They get to eat when the Daddy’s of Kindergartners are taking the Kindergartners off to Kindergarten.”
“Ohhhh,” I said. I turned towards Zoë. “Did you hear that?”
Zoë nodded. “Yes I did, Daddy.”
“Good.” I kissed my wife’s neck and held her tightly around the waist. “When the Daddy’s of Kindergartners get home can the Mommy’s of Kindergartners and the Daddys of Kindergartners go back to bed?”
“This Mommy of a Kindergartner can go back to bed to sleep,” she told me, obviously catching the real meaning of what I asked her. She glided my hand down towards her growing belly and held it there. I smiled and kissed her again. She patted my hand. “All right, Tiger, enough.” I growled. Zoë laughed at my animal noise. Clare stood up, fighting off my grasp. “It’s almost time for you two to get going. Zoë, have you got all your stuff?”
“Yes, Mommy.” Zoë slid down off her chair and picked up her backpack from the floor. She held it up so both Clare and I could see it. “Me and Winnie-A-Pooh are ready for school!”
Clare shot me a glance mixed with pride and nervousness. She too was a little bit scared about sending Zoë off to school for the first time. We had talked about it a lot over the past week even though we both knew it had to be done. Zoë’s birthday had been in August and we were lucky that she made the cut off date for Kindergarten. We had enrolled her a week after her birthday passed. We agreed that I would take our daughter to her first day of school and Clare would stay with the baby until we had a routine worked out. I refused to send Zoë on the bus, and the dream I had the night before did not help my worries about school. I myself had gone to Kindergarten but I stopped formal schooling after the third grade. After that I was taught at home by my mother. Clare wasn’t going to teach Zoë at home so I knew I had to get used to the school idea. It was harder than I had imagined. We struck a compromise with the driving thing although Clare found it to be stupid. I insisted that I didn’t mind taking her but Clare knew that I was scared that the bus monitors would be incompetent and lose our daughter along the way. I couldn’t help feeling that way, I guess because it had happened to me when I was in Kindergarten.
I remembered that my mother and father had driven my older brother, Isaac, and I to the small private school in our hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma on the first day of school but we were expected to take the bus home after school ended that day. Isaac was in second grade and he had been taking the bus since kindergarten but I had never taken it before. I remembered how much I loved that big yellow bus when I was a toddler. I could remember when Isaac started to go to school and my mom would take me to the bus stop twice a day and I would stare up in awe at the big bus. We were living in Virginia at the time Isaac started school, living in a neighborhood that was extremely close to Washington, D.C. My dad worked all the time and my mom used to take my brother and I shopping all the time in the city. We rode on a bus most of the time but that bus was nothing at all like a school bus. There were old people on that bus, smelly old people. The big yellow school bus was full of kids, not the old people who liked to pinch my cheeks and tell me how cute I was, but kids that threw food and got to ride to a place where there was more kids who threw even MORE food. I could not wait to be Isaac’s age and be able to ride on that bus.
When my second brother was born, my family and I moved back to Tulsa, where I was born five years before and where my parents had grown up. Now it was my turn to ride the bus. I was anger when my mom told me that the bus was not going to start picking me up from home right away, only back home from school. I wanted to ride it twice, not just once. I fought with my mother as she dressed me in my black pants, button down shirt, and tie, the school uniform required by my new school. My parents drove me and Isaac to school and the minute I got there I saw a big yellow bus. I struggled to get out of my seat to get a closer look but my mom had already gotten out of the car and was standing in my way. I gave in to her and listened to her lecture about how I had to behave, and how she was so proud of me. I nodded at her, starring at the bus that was parked past her the whole time she spoke. She told me to meet Isaac at the front of the school as soon as my teacher dismissed me and not to leave until we were together. She then instructed my brother to meet me in front of the building and not to lose me. She quizzed Isaac on our bus number we were going to take, number 3045.
I guess I should have listened.
My first day of school was much like many other children’s first days, lots of coloring, singing, napping, and snacking. I made a friend that day who also loved the big yellow bus. His name was Ashley. He had a brother who was in second grade and he loved cookies! Just like me! We had so much in common. Our favorite comic character was He-Man and we played He-Man on the playground at recess, letting the rest of the guys in our class play as well. I made a lot of friends that day but Ashley was my favorite.
After nap-time, my new best friend and I drew pictures of He-Man and She-Ra fighting against each other. He-Man won of course, because he was the best. A girl couldn’t fight! Not against He-Man!
After school was over Ashley and I got our bookbags, said our closing pray in class, and were sent on the “bus-line” out to the front of the school. I looked around for my brother but couldn’t find him anywhere. Ashley dashed towards one of the big yellow buses but stopped short when he realized I was still at the top of the steps looking around for my brother.
“What are you doing?” He asked.
“Looking for my brother,” I replied looking both ways over and over again but
still not spotting him anywhere.
Suddenly out of nowhere I saw him standing with a bunch of guys and, yuck, girls, near the flagpole. I called out his name. He looked up at me and I started waving furiously at him. He made a face and looked back towards his friends. Why isn’t he coming to get me? I wondered. Why is he with the yucky girls and not me? I started pouting.
“Come on,” Ashley insisted rushing back up the stairs towards me. He grabbed my hand and pulled me. “The bus is going to leave. Come on!”
“Ok!” I told him, not wanting to miss my chance to ride on the bus that I loved so much. I completely forgot about how mean Isaac was and dashed with my new friend towards the huge yellow bus. We ran past the bus monitor who was standing outside checking off names of the kids and claimed our bench in the back of the bus. The doors closed and I got really excited as I wanted for my first school-bus ride to begin.
A little while later we were zipping past streets but Ashley and I were talking about He-Man the whole time. Every time the bus stopped the number of kids on the bus decreased and pretty soon there were only a few of us left. At one point Ashley stood up.
“I will see you tomorrow,” he told me, grabbing his backpack off the floor. He walked towards the front and as the bus started again I waved at him until he was out of sight. It never occurred to me that I was the only kid left on the bus. I sat on the bench alone with my backpack set neatly next to me and my He-Man lunch box sitting on my lap. I watched the trees go by as the bus driver kept driving towards his destination. I didn’t recognize any of the streets but I wasn’t scared, mostly because I was sure that the bus driver would take me to my house any minute.
When the bus stopped again I didn’t recognize the place at all. There were a lot of buses around but no houses, just one big building in the middle of the seat of yellow. The driver left and that was when I started to get scared. It was getting dark out now and I was alone on the big yellow bus. I wanted to go home and watch He-Man. I was pretty sure that my show was going to be on soon because it always came on when the sun was going down.
I sat on the bench for a few minutes and then decided that I didn’t like the bus anymore. I picked up my backpack and walked down the aisle of the bus. I had to find the bus driver, he’d make everything all right, I just knew he would.
I found the overweight, balding man outside, leaning up against the bus with smoke rising out of his mouth. He was very big but he reminded me of Santa Claus with the belly. I tugged on his shirt and said “excuse me, Mr. Bus Driver, but can I go home now?”
The old man looked at me and in a shocked voice exclaimed, “where did you come from?”
Water started filling my eyes when I realized that home was nowhere in sight, all there was around us was the sea of yellow. The buses that I had longed to ride my entire life were now scary and foreign to me. Most of all, I missed my mommy. “From Mommy!” I cried as the man scooped me up and rushed me inside the bus to make a very detoured trip to take a very small little boy home to his mommy and daddy.
Basically to make a long story short, Isaac got in a lot of trouble that day and I refused to ever take the big scary bus again.
“Daddy?” Zoë asked me, interrupting my thoughts. She was now standing on the floor with her back pack over her two shoulders starring up at me, waiting for me to get the car keys and take her to school. “Can we go now?”
I blinked a few times trying to forget the bad memory.
“Taylor?” Clare asked me her eyes showing concern. She placed her hand on my forehead. “You’re warm again, Taylor, what’s going on with you?” She wiped beads of sweat off my face. “You’re sweating like you’re on stage.”
“I-I’ll be fine,” I stuttered getting up from my chair. I tried to resume my composture but was unsuccessful. I took the car keys out of my pocket and smiled at my little girl. “How about you go get in the car and I’ll be there in a minute.”
“OK, Daddy.” My daughter was out the door in a flash.
I leaned my head against the cool doorframe allowing my thoughts to focus on only one thing, driving Zoë to school. The next thing I knew Clare was next to me, touching me once again with her gentle hands.
“Taylor, I don’t want you to be driving like this.”
I opened my eyes and turned my head towards her. “I have to,” I told her.
“At least go to a doctor on your way home from the school today,” my wife begged, “please.”
“Maybe I will.”
“You’ve been up almost every night for a week straight, Jordan,” Clare informed me. “You have trouble falling asleep once you wake up. Taylor, I know you, and this isn’t like you at all.”
“I know,” I mumbled. I picked my head up from the door frame and glanced at my watch. “Listen, I’ve got to drop Zoë off before she’s late.” My head was pounding now, I could feel my face burning with a fever.
“Promise me you’ll stop at the doctors,” Clare pleaded, her touch lingering on my cheek.
“I promise.”