AT THE BUS STOP, SEPTEMBER 17TH - by Jan Horning

I have become a fearful woman, after becoming a frightened woman.  Ten years ago, I was in the local courtroom requesting a temporary restraining order against a man I barely knew.  I spent the next month at home alone, during fire season when my husband was gone often and sometimes all night, and I quit my job and all of my favorite social activities.  I wasn’t granted a permanent restraining order against the man who stalked me, and had to try re-defining my life to stay safe.  I stopped going to many places by myself, and became afraid of being looked at by men.  Over the years, health problems accelerated my fearfulness until I became frightened about walking downtown in Astoria.  I did, however, find a social activity that I felt safe in, a writing group that met in the local library and then in a church. When we decided to go on an event we named “Write Around Astoria” we each chose a different place to visit in town and stay awhile, and then we would write about our varied experiences and share them with the group.  At first, I was dismayed about being alone somewhere in town for an extended period of time, but pleasant childhood memories of riding the bus with my grandmother to go shopping downtown in Chicago helped me decide to stay at the transit center, the bus station, and watch the people come and go.

I parked one block away from the bus station, after driving from breakfast with my writing group friends, and walked towards the office area near the Columbia River with a purse and a bag with writing materials in one hand and my pink-flowered cane in the other.  I heard sea lions first, barking, bellowing, bringing locals and tourists alike to enjoy their squalling serenades to the sea. Below me I saw clean sidewalks, adorned by my shadow under the sun.  Inside the office was a quiet, empty waiting area; and a counter with two smiling girls who greeted me as I approached to tell them of my mission.  I could have stayed in the waiting room of comfortable chairs with padded backs and cushions, but instead chose to go outside and wait on a hard wooden bench inside of a glass-walled shelter.  The sights and sounds of the nearby river made up for the discomfort of sitting on an unforgiving bench.

I slowly descended the stairs to the sidewalk where a woman on a gurney waited with daughters and granddaughters surrounding her.  A very special day it was, for a faraway granddaughter came to visit a woman whose life was close to its ending and the nursing center helped arrange for one last family outing together on a sunny summer day.  I walked past them to the shelter facing the river, the trolley tracks, the hotel, the fish processing plant, the professional offices on the short Astor Street. I sat down with pavement squares of red cement tiles laid in a perpendicular pattern just beyond my feet. Purse, bag, and cane to my right and a notebook on my lap. Pen in hand.  I waited.

The first bus that pulled in was long, white with blue lettering -- The Navigator.  The bus driver came down its steps, went behind the opened door and opened the luggage area down below, while one by one the passengers slowly followed.  First one to leave was a girl, young, short white shorts on long browned legs and a backpack on her back. Around the back she went, and across the street to the sidewalk where she headed for downtown. Behind her came others, with backpacks and rollaboard luggage, until the exodus ended and the driver took one final look at the clouds and mountains over in Washington; at the river between the states; and at the parked cars and perambulators on Astor Street before he climbed up the stairs to sit in his seat and start the next part of his journey towards home.  Other buses followed, but none as long or as full as The Navigator from Portland.

I saw so many people, so many different people that day, and it wasn’t until I was leaving that I realized that I’d been looking at strangers and being looked at by strangers for over two hours. I had been stared in the face by men I did not know, and for the first time in years I didn’t feel fear.  My thoughts and daydreams of the travelers on the bus had brought me a vicarious excitement that emboldened me with a confidence that I’d thought I would never carry again.  I truly felt as good as I had in those long-ago days when I was walking alongside my grandmother, holding her hand, and listening to all of the cars and buses and trains and people talking and practically jumping up and down with excitement.  What a day!