All things must pass

It was a sunny, but reasonably cool afternoon earlier this week when I decided to walk in to younger daughter's school from the Iris Transitway Station. It takes me about 25 minutes, so I had my iPod in my breast pocket, pulling it out periodically to advance to good walking songs. There's a sneaky uphill grade on Navaho that requires an energetic tune like, say, "Architects and Engineers" by Guster.

Made it to the school, and with younger daughter trotting in my wake, strode down the steep green hill at Copeland Park just recently shaved of thousands of dandelions,  and took up our stations at the bus stop.  Hmmn, I thought.  Better slip my iPod into my purse for safekeeping.

That's when I noticed that there was nothing else in my breast pocket.  There had been two bus passes there when I started my walk down Iris.  I've spoken before about how you tend to go through Kübler-Ross' Five Stages of Grieving in quick order for a minor loss.  A bus pass is, I suppose, a minor loss at $96.25 (that's about sixty pounds to any Brits listening in).  Of course, I'd lost younger daughter's as well at $76.75.  I went rapidly through disbelief, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally a wry kind of acceptance.  I could take some chilly comfort in that we were halfway through the month, and that I haven't lost my bus pass in over five years.

Of course, that time, I got it back.  The phone rang not all that long after younger daughter and I had made our way home, after a stop for scones with Devonshire Cream and lemon curd to salve my self-disappointment.  It was a fella who had found my pass at Iris and Woodroffe, and it turned out that, like the Resident Fan Boy, he worked for the Department of Justice, only in a different department on Sparks Street.  We made arrangements for my dropping by to retrieve it the following day.  I wondered if I would be lucky enough to get another phone call about younger daughter's pass, but reasoned it would be a long-shot indeed.

That night, I lay on my side and found myself grieving younger daughter's bus pass, and troubling myself with sad imaginings of it lying off the dark pavement somewhere, with her picture obscured by dirt.  I had to remind myself sharply that the genuine article was tucked up safely down the hall.

My cheerful plump saviour handed over my pass in the vestibule of his office building.  He told me his wife had told him to drop it in the mailbox but he told her it wouldn't get to me for weeks.  I answered that I was delighted to get it back at all, but particularly so quickly.  As I moved back into the street, I noticed it was a bit bent and a felt a little stab when I saw that the emergency bus tickets I always keep in the plastic holder were missing.  My CPS had not been the first person to find it.  It was then I knew I would not be seeing younger daughter's bus pass again.  From a distance, my daughter's picture could be of any young girl with long brown hair; I know the bus drivers seldom give more than a cursory glance.

Oh well, whoever you are, I hope you really, really needed this break.  Use it in good health and think kindly of the little girl in the picture.