A Walk to the School Bus

The portrait of a short commute

She has to be out the door by 6:45 every morning. 

“Hurry!” I tell her. “Don’t forget your lunchbox! And here’s your water bottle.” If we leave even two minutes late, we have to sprint to catch the school bus, but so far, knock on wood, we’ve only missed it once. 

When the school year began last August, the sunshine was already brilliant and warm, even this early, stretching golden rays over the curve of earth as we stepped outside the door. In the deepest part of winter, it was as dark as midnight, and the icy cold made our faces hurt. But now, as we inch closer to spring, the sky holds a hint of light in the east. On clear mornings, it’s a smudge of red behind the purple hills in the distance. 

We hurry past the neighborhood garbage drop-off, with its designated bins for recycling and the shed where we store the trash till it’s picked up behind a spring latch to keep out the feral cats. Just past the garbage shed is the home of my son’s teacher, with her two rescue dogs jumping against the wire fence and barking insults as my dachshund pulls at her leash with snappy retorts.

Our houses are modern, like stacked shoeboxes painted gray, with interiors bright, spacious, and warm through the whole bitter winter. But just outside the neighborhood, where we intersect the narrow rice paddy road, there is an old abandoned house, traditional Korean style with a sloping blue roof made of corrugated tin and trimmed with white spikes. An old door with peeling red paint hangs askew. Every time I pass it, I wonder about the people who used to live there. When did they leave and why? Was it because construction of the new neighborhood took all their land? Or were they already gone before it was built? If so, why is the house still there? Is it true, what all the kids and even a few adults say, that it’s haunted? What stories have these decaying walls seen?  

To my right, past the last house, is an old oak tree and behind it is a hill with grave mounds rising out of the ground as quiet sentries, keeping their peaceful, silent watch over the rice paddies. Right now, the paddies are only mud with dried up yellow stalks poking out of the ground. Soon they will be flooded with water, and then the rice will reach up in skinny, almost-fluorescent green stalks. Then they’ll turn a deeper green until by the end of summer, the fields will be lush and dark, with heavy clumps of rice bending the heads down. As they turn golden, they’ll be harvested, and at last the little stumps will stand ensconced in beds of frozen mud, a testament to another year gone by. 

We could turn right and then almost immediately left, down the  “spooky forest road” as Annalee calls it. But it’s the longer way, a strip of narrow asphalt with almost no shoulder for us to scoot to safety if a car comes along. Right now, dead leaves lie in ankle-deep piles along the road. We walk home along this road when the bright afternoon sun is shining, but even then we have to be alert. There are the occasional cars to watch for, but something is always rustling next to the road–maybe a cat, maybe a bird, maybe something else. One afternoon when it was still warm last fall, the fresh carcass of a tiger keelback, one of Korea’s few venomous snakes, curved across the road. They have a vivid and distinct marking–black stripes on a vermillion red except for the tail which is vibrant green. A few weeks later, when only the bones were left, I turned my head toward a sound in the bushes just in time to see another of those bright green tails slip into the leaves. I’ve wondered ever since if they have a nest close by.

Instead, we turn left, passing the abandoned house and its crumbling shed, and a small, overgrown field. Kabocha squash vines climbed the fence in summer, but now they are brown, with dried-out blossoms hanging toward the ground like mute bells. There’s another traditional house on the other side of the field. An ahjumma lives alone there, and when it’s warm, she works in her garden in the early morning light, wearing a flowery nightgown, her small white dog sniffing the ground next to her. She’ll smile at us as we greet her with bows and “Anyeonghaseyo’s” and her dog will follow until she calls him back. Right now, though, I see only one little light inside the house, past the courtyard. I wonder how much longer it will be till we see each other again. 

Last of all, before we reach the road, we pass a clump of bamboo. In other parts of the world, I might worry about who or what hides in the heavy darkness of those leaves, but here it is just a landmark, a sign that we are almost there. We cross the threshold of the rusted frame of an ancient gate, unsubstantial to keep out pedestrians but sturdy enough to keep cars from turning this way.  From there we jog to the bus stop, the headlights of the bus visible down the street behind us. I kiss her goodbye, and as the bus pulls away, I wave and blow another kiss. 

If I didn’t have to be out so early, I would be warm in my bright kitchen instead of bundled in layers to keep out the biting cold. I would be comfortable but oblivious to the miracle of light climbing over the dark surface of the earth and overtaking it. 

Someday, when we move again, or when she is old enough to walk to the bus alone like her older brother and sister do an hour later, I will miss watching the light change through the year. I will miss our brief pause at the corner as we look for the sunrise. I will miss the way the frost makes everything sparkle as if sprinkled with diamond dust, creating magic out of the mundane. I will miss the bees darting in and out of the kabocha squash blossoms, already busy as the day is just beginning.

But most of all, I’ll miss the little hand in mine as we hurry up the road. I’ll miss the quick kiss goodbye, then the eyes searching through the window until they meet mine and she waves one last time as the bus gives a sigh before disappearing down the road. 

What present moments do you want to hold to, knowing will you miss them someday?