In Transit!

The Winnipeg Free Press, which I read daily, caught me by surprise recently. I noticed an article entitled In Transit  which happens to be the title of my blog. However, they were not publishing my blog postings but beginning "a special series on the state of the city's public transportation system." 

Although I haven't used the bus  for years, after graduating from high school, I used to take it quite regularly to my work at a Christian book store . Now my oldest grandson takes it to his university classes and wherever else he needs to go. 

Here's a quote from the newspaper article that caught my eye and tugged at my heart  strings: 

"It's the route that exists to break your heart on the darkest of mornings and the coldest of evenings, in the pounding rain and cold wind. You see the shape of a bus in the distance heading towards you, and you can't make out the number to see if it's yours. It passes. It isn't yours. The only thing worse is watching the lights of your bus pull away from the curb before you can get to it. . . The bus has 10,000 stories, both inside and out, and a front-row seat to every one of them. 

Here's one of my bus stories:

I remember going home for Christmas, by Greyhound bus from Winnipeg to Alberta the year I graduated from high school. The song "The Little Drummer Boy" was playing at the restaurant where we stopped. When I hear that song I'm always back there again. 

At home everything was different. My teenage brothers, who picked me up at the train station, had grown lean and lank. My middle sisters were approaching their teen years and my baby sister was about to enter grade one. The sister next to me was graduating from high school in spring and would join me later in Winnipeg. Dad promised me that the whole family would be moving there soon. 

Back in Winnipeg after Christmas, I got off the Grayhound on Main Street around midnight and tried to get a bus back to my relatives where I was staying. I finally did catch a bus which proved to be the last one. By that time I  had no feeling in my hands and feet. Just numbness. And my mind felt numb as well. There was no one to welcome me back as I quietly slipped into the house and into my room. That was the coldest and loneliest time of my life. 

Here's one of Hardy's bus stories:

It is a sweltering hot Sunday. Hardy is boarding a bus on a busy street in Kinshasa, in the Republic of Congo. He plans to attend a church service together with his African companion who will preach the sermon. It seems everyone is getting on this bus and there are no rules about overcrowding. People are packed in like sardines.  Some are still trying to get on as the bus leaves and hanging on wherever they can get a grip. A Congolese Mama towers over Hardy, on her head a bowl full of market produce . She manages to balance it there without effort until he accidentally steps on her foot. "Mundele, sambu na inki nge kele awa na bus? Nge fweti baka voiture!" ("white man, why are you here on this bus? You should be taking your car!") She scolds him, but then  laughs, raucously, at the sight of this short white man on the bus, speaking her language!  Hardy got a new name that day. "Mundele ya bus." White man on the bus."

Hardy returned from that tropical steam bath to marry the girl who tried, half frozen, to catch a bus at midnight. They were married mid January, fifty six years ago today, and the weather was as bad as that night when she almost froze trying to catch the bus! But for the next fifteen years, living close to the equator, which was almost like living in a sauna, she was never cold or lonely again.

This anniversary year will be different. Hardy has gone ahead of me again.  

I didn't know much about the Congo, and when I arrived it was totally different from  anything I could have imagined. 

I suspect that when I join him  where he is now I will be surprised ! 

But I have a feeling that, like in the Congo, there will be music, and dancing, and light.