Number and Name


Dear Eugene,

I thought I saw my son on the bus so I texted him, Hey I saw you just now on the bus.

I was at the skytrain station, just got off the train and waiting for my bus, number 144.  The number matters, but if one is to make out the digits by zeroing in the far corner where the bus would first emerge and become visible to one standing where I was, it would only be half success.  The name that comes after the numbers tells if your luck is true, if the world is spinning for or against you.

I was almost lucky, I understood and accepted it way before the bus pulled close.  So slowly I walked out of the rain and back to the bus station shelter, happy to know I can't lose twice in row (not that it had never happened before).

When I hope I dream.  When I dream I don't put my head down.  I saw this good looking boy on the bus sitting at a well-lit spot and it dawned on me he's my son.  As if he shouldn't be on the bus by himself, without me, going away from home, on the same path I am taking but heading the exact opposite way.  As if all these as-ifs were not already happening since way back when.

That's the first time I saw my son as an individual, someone so outside of me that I must call him a stranger, acknowledge his beautiful strangeness, consider his humanity "in the beginning."  Strange enough.  Today.  5:30 pm.  After all these years of already as-ifs.

My son replied Cool as I saw his bus ready to make a turn to get out of the bus bay.  A huge milk truck in front of it brought hesitation to the turn.  I came up with a joke about milk and quickly pulled out my phone to try to crack it to him.

Then I didn't know what happened suddenly the bus was gone and with it my joke lost.

Yours, Alex

Comments

  1. KateDecember 19, 2018 at 7:03 AM

    Dear Eugene,

    The long wait in standing, straining to watch a dot of the bus sizing up to its full form in nearness and memory, the rides to swimming and skating lessons in the bloom of summer, of childhood too tender to name or number - these are my daughter’s favorite early memories in Vancouver.

    And in the bus she sat, her short legs swinging wildly with every pause & roll of big wheels on lanes taking her to places and people, to random eateries like the $ 1 pizza slices grabbed in inches a pad of a finger at a time, to supermarkets giant in taste and touch,down the aisles of crayons, sugar and plush ponies, tiny toes tapping and turning to numbers and names called by the voice of her guardian... 1,200 miles distant from me.

    In these buses on those royal days I never once spot her. It would have been a glimpse impossible by logistics. I could only imagine in number and name.

    So on the bus this Winter holiday she and I will ride, roam the alleys and mountains of Vancouver, retrace playgrounds, places and portraits evocative of numbers and names unknown to me... until this Christmas.

    Yours, Kate

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