DECEMBER 11, 2019 – Yesterday at 5:30 p.m. while I shivered at my bus stop, I checked the temperature on my phone: 4F. To my relief, the 5:35 bus appeared right on time.
The commute the evening before had been a different story. Through new snow, buses on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis had crawled 30 minutes behind schedule. The fancy bus stop shelter had been packed, so with the overflow crowd, I experienced frostbite from the 40-minute wait in serious windchill. By the time my bus arrived, it was already jammed with passengers. Their winter-wear filled whatever breathing space would otherwise have been available. I was too cold to mind being squeezed among big, down-filled winter coats.
As the bus skidded at each stop, then spun its wheels to get underway again, I felt quiet gratitude for public transport through such inhospitable conditions.
Upon boarding the bus yesterday evening, I noticed a fresh box of Kleenex next to the ticket reader.
Because the snowbanks are already so high they interfere with the back door opening, I walked to the front of the bus when it approached my home stop. As the driver slowed, I asked her if the box of Kleenex had been her idea and initiative.
“Yes,” she said cheerfully. “I know in the cold my passengers are apt to freeze their faces while they wait, and they’re gonna need to blow their noses once they climb aboard my bus!”
She slowed the bus to a smooth stop so that the front doorway was just beyond the end of the snowbank. “Perfect landing!” I said.
“Why, thank you!” she said. “Now you be safe out there!”
In the cold, dense air, my shoes squeaked on the hard-packed snow cover as I hurried along down the street to our house. A bright moon lit up my way—and my thoughts.
I reflected on Rosa Parks and her famous ride aboard that city bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955. I contemplated the double absurdity of it all: she’d been yelled at not for having sat in the “whites only” section of the bus but for having refused to yield her seat in the “colored” section to a white passenger when the “whites only” section was full.
I thought about the African American woman who’d served as my bus driver, who’d set out the box of Kleenex for “her” passengers aboard “her” bus, who’d so expertly slowed the bus to a smooth stop, who’d so graciously and cheerfully wished me a safe farewell into the cold night air—I imagined that her name was Rosa Parks. I imagined that somehow the injustices of the past had been blown away by the arctic cold; that all was now right in the world for the descendants of slavery, the heirs of continued injustice.
But I knew better. Though much has improved in this country, we have promises to keep. And miles to go before we sleep. And miles to go before we sleep.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
