She saw her moment and seized it. When else would She have one hour and six minutes to hotbox This Girl on the bus to the City? When else, pray tell, would she be able to share with This Girl—in her inimitable logorrheic way—EXACTLY what she thought of This Girl's mother? (She'd been waiting four years to unload her tome-of-a-take on the topic). The mother whom, She explained, She had "for sure" pegged as a trainwreck, but whose "better qualities" had eventually come to the fore, semi-redeeming the mother, but only in limited settings. This Girl's mother, whom—again, She couldn't help but overshare—She'd seen on numerous occasions looking "starry-eyed" at the now-partner (decidedly not This Girl's then father) even though he wasn't, ahem, "that well-dressed." (She was, in fact, less generous.) These were, after all, salacious tidbits too precious to keep to Her-adult-self. For She had decided (without reading up, apparently) that This Girl wanted/needed/had(!) to be reminded of the biggest loss and trauma of her life four years later by this self-anointed, filterless Adult Amok acquaintance (same zip code, but does that confer the Undo-Healing License?) on the bus en route to This Girl's first-ever-dream-of-a-lifetime internship.
Thankfully, This Girl is strong enough to know that She of the Bus, like Most of the Rest, knew very little of her family's love and loss. Of the galactic grief and consequent Sisyphean healing. And certainly She of the Bus knew not the glimmers of the future foretold, which were happening each day in small ways, wresting intact into a relative term meaning, to This Girl and her mother, "to hold together." Through all of it, even the shitshows on the bus.
In case She of the Bus missed this instructive TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/esther_perel_rethinking_infidelity_a_talk_for_anyone_who_has_ever_loved?language=en
Thankfully, This Girl is strong enough to know that She of the Bus, like Most of the Rest, knew very little of her family's love and loss. Of the galactic grief and consequent Sisyphean healing. And certainly She of the Bus knew not the glimmers of the future foretold, which were happening each day in small ways, wresting intact into a relative term meaning, to This Girl and her mother, "to hold together." Through all of it, even the shitshows on the bus.
In case She of the Bus missed this instructive TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/esther_perel_rethinking_infidelity_a_talk_for_anyone_who_has_ever_loved?language=en
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