DON’T ALWAYS HURRY TO A GREEN LIGHT: Mindful wisdom from a beloved father

For most of my growing up years, my dad drove a school bus. It was his steady bread and butter income, one in which he took great pride. He also won many awards for safe driving over the years from the school board and was beloved by the community of children he carried. This afforded him an opportunity not only to drive his children to and from school, but to hear the conversations of our peers and other children in the community.

The bright yellow bus was a long tunnel with 13 rows of dark brown coloured leatherette seats on either side with a black metal bar structure attached to its back, which made a four-legged support underneath its bench. Its floor was covered with a thin black rubberized material that prevented slips from wet shoes on rainy days. The side windows could slide halfway down with a squeeze of two tabs, and there were double doors at the back for an emergency exit. There were no seatbelts.

For the first four years of my elementary school, Dad drove me and my sisters to our respective schools across town. We loved being on Dad’s bus for our rides to and from school. After he’d drop all the other children off, he’d drive down Gilbert Street, a wide two-lane street that had three hills with beautifully recessed homes with manicured lawns on either side. Daddy knew just how to drive over the crests of those hills so that we’d get butterflies time and time again.

Some years later, he drove my brother on a bus specially equipped with a wheelchair lift to pick up other students all headed to the High School for Exceptional Children, as it was called, with other special needs children. Dad learned many safety strategies while driving for so many years, and was always our careful defensive driver on family car trips, to and from church on Sundays, or wherever we went.

His long yellow bus was parked across the street diagonally from our home in a huge square, partially grassy lot that had once been the turnaround termination point for the city bus; it was as far south as the bus would pick up passengers. Later, it became the lot for three school buses, but after a couple of vandal attacks, Dad extended our driveway and parked the bus close to our home for the last years that he was a driver.

Some days, my cousin Debbie and I would open the doors and play a game, “Guess Where I’m Going.” Careful not to touch the gas pedal or gearshift, we’d call out turns, right or left, and street names, to see if the other could figure out where we ended up by our driving descriptions and what we’d passed by.

A masterful manoeuvre

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On a routine morning, we boarded the bus and headed out to pick up the other children. We started on the narrow four-lane main city street, Line Avenue, that ran the north and south length through town. After Dad pulled onto it from 73rd Street, the first traffic signal was at 70th Street. Alene sat across the aisle from us and my sister Kathy and I sat directly behind Dad, with a metal L-shaped bar between us.

This morning, I noticed something was different. Dad’s big Whitaker ears turned dark red and seemed to stick out even more than usual as we approached the light. “Hold on chil’ren!” he yelled as he moved the gearshift with some urgency. Without slowing down, he swerved the bus through a corner gas station and I then saw water shooting up into the air as we passed a row of gas pumps. He took another quick, jerky right as I held onto that pole in front of me for dear life.

Daddy said no other words, but I could tell from his body that he was focused as he wielded the long yellow bus. He managed to weave the bus, somehow narrowly missing another row of gasoline pumps. He took one more sharp left onto 70th Street, where the bus came to a slow roll and stopped. It felt like forever in slow motion, though it was probably only a few minutes that we tossed and swerved in that bus with dad masterfully manoeuvring.

My Dad would’ve hit about six waiting cars full of parents and children at the light if he hadn’t avoided them by his smart manoeuvring through the gas station.

The owner of the neighbourhood store just across the street, Mr. Bolton, rushed out to assist us. My big sister Alene yanked the lever to open the bus doors and took off running the three blocks for home to alert our mother, who was still there getting ready for her library job that started at 9 a.m.

My little skinny legs were barely able to hold my weight as I tried to stand. The adrenaline rushed in, causing my whole body to tremble from all the fright and erratic movement that had tossed my seven-year-old body like a windy flag waving high on a pole.

I later learned that the bus’s brakes had failed, though they’d been serviced the day before. My Dad would’ve hit about six waiting cars full of parents and children at the light if he hadn’t avoided them by his smart manoeuvring through the gas station, which ultimately slowed the bus to a stop.

When he went to brake, the pedal went to the floor; in that split second, instead of pulling the emergency brake, which could’ve thrown us forward and through the windows, and still not allowed enough time to stop the bus before plowing into those waiting cars, he chose to slow the bus by weaving and avoid harming people with the 10,000-pound vehicle.

“You girls alright?” he asked as he stood, pulling the emergency brake, himself shaking. He helped me and my sister Kathy off the bus. When I got to the bottom step, my legs gave way, I collapsed, and the tears flowed. He scooped me up, gently hugged me and kissed my cheek, and reminded me that we were all OK.

Mr. Bolton brought me a Coke in a small glass bottle to calm and console me, which I began to sip as Dad went to survey the damage to the station and the bus. He and the other people in some of the cars had pulled over to see if we were OK.

Mr. Bolton and others told my Dad after they learned his brakes had failed, they were amazed at his driving skills and how he manoeuvred the hulking yellow school bus, saving not only his daughters and the occupants in the cars, but also managing to avoid any major property damage.

He was already my hero, but that day, he became my superhero.

Mindful wisdom from Dad

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Dad would always give little tidbits of driving knowledge when we were in the car. He’d plant safety tips long before we were driving on our own, things like, “You have to watch out for the other drivers.”

And I noticed one day that he’d slowed down a bit when approaching an intersection with a green light for his lane. I said, “Dad, why are you slowing down? The light is green.”

“Don’t always hurry to a green light,” he cautioned us.

At first, it didn’t make sense. Most of us think that if you see a green light, that means go, so you speed up to get through the light. But Dad cautioned against that. He told me, “You have to look around to see what other cars are doing; sometimes, people make a right turn, and if you’re rushing to get through that green light, that’s when accidents can happen.”

I came to realize that “don’t always hurry to a green light” is also a metaphor for how to move and choose in life. Hurrying to a green light means that just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should. Hurrying to a green light is when the door is wide open, but you know you shouldn’t go in.

Hurrying to a green light can mean taking the easier shortcut or cheating when there is an honest, more deliberate path to your goals. Hurrying to a green light is doing all the things you want to do and not so much of the things you should do. Green lights are a good thing; they keep us going forward, but we must remember not to rush through.

Not hurrying to a green light is slowing down to take in the landscape of what is happening in that moment, doing what’s right even if it’s not easy, and moving through with caution and clarity.

So even now, as my adult daughter tells me to “Hurry up, Mom, the light is green,” I return the gem to her as it was given to me, and caution her as my father did me in the hope that she, with time, can metaphorically understand that green lights are great when we get them or give them to ourselves in life. Either way, proceed with caution and optimism.

images: Depositphotos