The Wheels On The Bus...

Yesterday afternoon, Beth hopped off the bus with her usual exuberance. She ran up to give me a hug, chattering away about her day's adventures. As the bus drove away, I noticed something.

"Beth, where's your backpack?", I asked her.

Beth's face registered shock, then horror, and then pure despair. She burst into tears.

"I left it on the bus", she wailed. "Oh, no!!! All my papers and journals from the whole year were in my backpack! Today was the day that I got to bring them all home to show you."

I felt a short speech regarding responsibility arising within me, but I quickly stifled it when I saw just how upset she was. Her wails grew louder and louder, as she slowly remembered all the treasures that she kept in her pack.

"My lunch box!", she shrieked. "And my snack bags! My thermos! Oh, I'll never get to bring a drink to school again. And, oh no!!! MY UNIFORM SWEATER WAS IN THAT BAG"!!

Try as I might, I could not console her. She cried during the entire trip home, and continued to sniffle through dinner. I'm assuming that it might be similar to the feeling we adults might have after losing a wallet or pocketbook. She was absolutely devastated.

She went to bed still mourning her lost items, and our reassurances that the pack would be waiting for her in the morning did not help. A full hour after she went into bed, she re-emerged, with tears in her eyes.

"I don't know what I'll put my drink into tomorrow", she sobbed. "We aren't allowed to use sippy cups, and that was the only thermos I have".

Finally, she drifted off into a restless sleep.

Later that evening, as Dan and I were readying Brian for bed, we heard a knock at the door downstairs. Dan ran to get it while I finished dressing Brian. He peered through the window and called up to me,

"It looks like...I think...I think it's Beth's bus driver!", he said, incredulously.

It was. This wonderful, kind lady had headed out into the night to return Beth's pack. She knows that Beth is only in kindergarten, and that therefore there surely couldn't be anything overly important in the pack. She knew that Beth could get her bag first thing in the morning, and that it wasn't an earth-shattering event.

But somehow, she knew just how important it would be for Beth to have her bag returned. We thanked her profusely. I then tiptoed into the girls' room and whispered the news to Beth. Relief flooded her face, and she cuddled up into her blankets and fell back asleep.

Dan and I spent the evening looking over Beth's science journal from the year, which came home in her backpack. We read about the amaryllis plant's weekly measurements and development, and laughed at Beth's spelling attempts. We learned about how the "catipillrs or hnhng". (Translation: the caterpillars are hanging!) We looked through her pictures and marveled at the improvements seen in her penmanship book.

And then, after making Beth's lunch (in her favorite lunch sack) and filling her beloved thermos with water, Dan and I checked on the kids and then headed off to bed. We all slept soundly. Even Beth. All thanks to a very special and very thoughtful bus driver.