The bus of blue peeling paint stopped right in front of me and a man with a feathered hat and fingernails only a shade browner than his skin displayed a yellow toothed grin as he pulled on the greasy stained rope which opened the door. I hopped on and gingerly took the closest available, nearly threadbare, once patterned, seat cushion. As the bus rumble stuttered down the street, I placed the bag of shelled walnuts I had just bought in my lap and stared through the grimy, fingerprinted window into the cool glare of the afternoon which washed the bustling street in a slightly ephemeral glow.
One icy dry hand rummaged in my pocket, which had recently turned into a used Kleenex graveyard of vast proportions. It fished out two badly mangled, stained, one kuai notes. The bus fare. Held in my pale, painfully splitting fingers, these notes held nothing of fascination, being exact replicas of the many hundreds of one kuai notes that I've spent this semester... but the date caught my eye. Printed in 1999. Exactly ten years ago.
In 1999 I was 14 years old. I knew nothing, but I didn't know that at the time. Baptized the year before, the farthest I had ever traveled from my family's Chatham County, North Carolina home was to our nation's capital, roughly four hours drive away. In 1999 my tiny world was falling apart through a series of adolescent friendship reshufflings, I had no dreams, a pet sheep named Billy Bob, and somehow couldn't manage to see past the end of my clarinet. Insecure and uncomfortable in my own skin, I moved through middle school classes hardly daring to imagine a world bigger than those pastel painted, locker lined halls.
The bus jerks and sputters and the door slams open to usher in nothing other than a gust of brisk air. It's 2009. I know nothing, but this time I know it. Years into a relationship with my Savior and countless miles and hours from Chatham County, suddenly this errand run strikes me with the full force of it's absolute strangeness. Who would have ever dreamed that 1999 me would be 2009 me? Who would have guessed at me being on this bus surrounded by people who look, act, and speak totally differently than I do? Who would have looked at these chapped fingers and guessed that 10 years before they were clumsily pressing clarinet keys in total oblivion to their future? Who writes stories like this one?
The tea houses and noodle shops turn to a blur outside the gritty bus windows, further obscured by the puffs of smoke from a wild eyed man's cigarette a few seats up. A song plays in minor keys belting out a range of language I am not able to understand. I crease and recrease the one kuai notes, dizzy from the pace of change remembered by looking at a printing date. Out of the chaos, a stillness:
All of my days were written in Your book and planned before a single one of them began.
So what will tomorrow look like Father?
