the bus stops here...

bus brakes. about 14 times a day buses pass my house. school buses, picking up, dropping off. always engaging their air brakes at the four way stop outside my front door.

each time i hear them i jolt, anxious fear rises up within me - my children - i've forgotten my children. i could have just placed them on the bus at 7:35, but at 7:45 when i hear those brakes my soul lurches within me.

what is it that rocks me to the core every time i hear those brakes?

could it be the fear of god my mother placed within me that i would in fact miss the bus? missing the bus was the worst disappointment i could have afforded my mother. it was a way to wreck her day. i wasn't careful enough, fast enough, focused enough, vigilant enough.

the bus stops here.

anne lamott says, 'i have a black belt in co-dependency'. me too... disappointing my mother was a sure way to a day, a week or a month of 'it's all downhill from here.'

it was always my fault. i held the weight of the family on my small shoulders. maybe that's why my shoulders are so broad now? i don't know, what i do know is that bus brakes make me jump inside.

even after pink and buck are both home safe and sound for the day, hearing those busses stop outside my house lurch me into a place that i don't like to be.

missing the bus may have meant a ride to school, there were probably some of those. but i remember vividly the long trek up the hill, alone, feeling like i had let my mother down. crossing the four lane highway alone, wishing i'd get hit.

when the weather was right i would push my bike up that long hill (it's even long still now viewing it as an adult) just so that at 2:50 i could fly home. feel the wind in my hair. go faster than I'd ever gone before - flying like I so wanted to. i was tempted many times to just forget to hit the brakes and speed directly into the lake and have the water surround me, folding over me, enveloping me, hugging me.

those were probably my first thoughts of suicide. hoping to get hit crossing the highway or riding my bike into the lake. that would show her, she'd miss me then.

getting to school and beginning the day with those thoughts in your head just made for a really bad day.

as i write this the brakes just squealed outside. did I forget buck? is he out there in the street thinking i'm a horrible mother and about to be kidnaped by rapist pedophiles between the stop sign and my front door (20 feet?).

it wasn't, i've got 24 minutes until his bus comes. until the squealing is really the one's i'm listening for. heck, who am I kidding - i stand at the window 10 minutes early, or on the porch (even in freezing weather) so no one, not even the damn bus driver would think i was shirking MY stuff. that i was my mother.

that's really it, that's probably why they make me lurch. there must be forgotten memories of getting home to an empty house, being forgotten or having to make do alone.

i don't remember. maybe writing this will jar them loose.