Unknown Citizen

Who was Sa-ul?  What gave him joy? What made him sad?  Do we really know another’s rapture or despair? What flavor ice cream did he favor? Did he even like ice cream?

Who was Sa-ul? A kindly man, maybe 45. maybe 50.  He drove a bus.  Sa-ul was the bus driver. The Learn and Play bus driver.  And every morning, of the the last two years of the days that I’d worked there, he carried the babies into the Center, smiling, exuding warmth and compassion, truly loving his job. The older kids would run over and hug him, as they do many who enter, but they really liked Sa-ul.   “Mr Sa-ul!” they’d shout with joyful exuberance.  

I’d walk around my neighborhood, and frequently I’d see the Learn and Play school bus, and Sa-ul would honk the horn and wave, always smiling, seemingly always happy.

Who was Saul? Did he have a cozy apartment, a lover, his own children? Who knew?  I didn’t. Sa-ul was the bus driver, a sweet man, a good man.  A man who did his job with a joie de vivre. A man I only knew as the bus driver.  We talked about fantasy field trips with the bus in the summer – Could we take the kids to Splish Splash.  But it was an old bus he said; he wasn’t sure it would make it. 

He was just there. And now he’s gone.  One day to the next. There was a viewing at the Hempstead Funeral Home.  Did I go for this unknown citizen, bus driver extraordinaire? Of course.