A Bus for Jesus

Jesus came back to life (again)! To celebrate, we want to the Chapel of the Resurrection on the campus on Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. Grandpa Mark ("Ark") and Grandma Dorothy ("Dot") accompanied us. As did your baby doll, a snack cup filled with Teddy Grahams, a book about baby bunnies, a tiny toy choo-choo, an entourage of quarter-sized animals to ride the choo-choo, and a pouch of gummy bunny fruit snacks. These items amused you for exactly 30 minutes. Then you noticed the backside of the woman in front of us, a backside covered in a speckled silk dress and sagging through the opening in the pew. "Dot!" you shouted, "dot! dot! dot!" As you shouted you also poked at the dots...and I promptly removed you from the service.

You ran around the entryway for awhile and then discovered the wide spiral staircase that leads both up to the choir loft and down to the smaller chapel and bathrooms below. The stairs were high enough that you could go both up and down them on your very own, without assistance from me or the vertical golden rails that wind downward with the staircase. At the very bottom of the stairs, the golden rails create a circular cage of sorts, the bars spaced about 18 inches apart. The bottom of the cage is paved with black rocks and stones, most about the size of a softball, their edges unsmoothed so that walking across the surface is a thoughtful event. In the center of the stones is a baptismal font that looks like it belongs to a different age. It is a cylindrical mass of gray stone, the top rendered slightly concave to hold water. I thought of Machu Picchu, the giant slabs of rock used for ceremony or sacrifice or chiseled so that running water could be diverted into pools, gullies, basins. The stairs you walked upon were stone too, a deep burnt orange, flecked with bits of light and dark. You walked upon all this in your Easter dress, pink at the top, rows of pastel flower cascading to a ruffle at the bottom. Pink tights. New silver shoes with zero traction. I missed the majority of the service but I will carry in my memory the contrast of your small body against the complexity and weight and formality of all that stone.

After church you ate frozen macaroni and cheese and took a nap. The adults sat on the sun porch and drank martinis and ate pastel colored almonds and Cougar gold cheese and matzah. After you woke, Dada and I walked you to the park (still, admittedly, a little tipsy from the martinis) and watched while you tackled the slides and the bouncy bridge and the wood chips. Dot worked on her knees in the flowerbeds and Ark took a nap in the study (below a painting I fondly refer to as "Yawn"). In the late afternoon we watched you play on the porch: blocks and wooden train tracks, your stuffed animal entourage and a plastic ball nearly half your size. Your favorite toy was a plastic school bus with a button you could press to incite the vehicle to offer songs and commentary ("stop and go, stop and go, la la la" or "look at the flashing lights!" or "we're on our way to school!"). The bus passengers included a white girl with frizzy hair and glasses, a happy African-American boy with a book, a Latino(a)-transvestite bus driver, a dog, and a wheelchair. Never has there been a more politically correct bus. Jesus would have loved to drive this bus! Luckily, you also alerted us every time a bus (or something that vaguely looked or sounded like a bus) drove by the house. You sure do love yourself a bus.

Now we are home again. Actually, Dada and I are home and you are with Grandma Ricki and Grandpa Peter. I'm not sure who was the most thrilled with the idea of you spending the night, you, us, or Grandma Ricki, but it's been a win-win situation all around. It's been raining all day and the house is very quiet without you. I both want you home and want the quiet to go on just a little bit longer.