100 Words

Twenty-two years driving the same route. I know which kid will fall asleep against the window, which old man needs the extra second at his stop, which woman cries on Thursdays. None of them know my name. That used to bother me. Now I think it's the best part of the job. I carry them all, they get where they're going, and nobody has to thank anybody. That's a kind of love too, I think. Just quieter.

My daughter asked why I never cry. I told her men don't need to. That night I sat in the car in the garage for an hour because I couldn't stop. I'm not sure what I was crying about. Maybe that I lied to her. Maybe that my father told me the same thing, in the same voice, and I believed him for thirty years. Tomorrow I'm going to tell her the truth. I just haven't found the words yet.

I taught four thousand boys to read. I know because I counted. Now my eyes are going, and my grandson reads to me in the evenings, slowly, sounding out the long words the way I taught his father. He thinks he is helping me. He is. But he is also giving me back every evening I ever spent in that classroom, one sentence at a time. I never told anyone the counting mattered to me. It did.