Blog 2 - Millie
She stands stoically at the bus stop in her pistachio green pantsuit, her gaze focused firmly forward toward approaching traffic and her two-toned hair of white roots and copper ends swept back symmetrically from each side of her face. In one hand, a purse she clutches tightly to her side and in the other is an eco-friendly shopping bag waving rhythmically in the breeze formed from passing cars.
It’s Tuesday morning, the day she typically shops for her toiletries at Walgreens and her groceries at Kroger, a schedule she’s maintained for the past twenty-seven years since the passing of her dear husband Sonny. Sharply at 9:00am, the TARC number fifteen will escort her personally to her destination and return her safely to her two bedroom Craftsman with her weekly supply of food and sundries the way Sonny used to do when he was still alive.
But today is different. Today is the last day number fifteen will stop at her corner because of deep cuts in the transit district’s new budget. The local occupational revenue has been diminishing in recent years and statistical data has shown low ridership through the upscale neighborhood populated now by aging yuppies, metrosexual savvy single males and a handful of retirees like Millie. Nobody takes the bus anymore. Most ride BMC road bikes or BMW 3 series automobiles. People Millie’s age live predominantly in retirement communities or nursing homes.
She is still proud to be living independently at 87 years of age and the bus has helped make part of that possible. Driving was something she just never got around to learning after the war when Sonny came home from Europe. She had always depended upon him or her own two legs to get her anywhere and since both of those modes had vanished, the number fifteen was her last option. They had never had children, even though they had both wanted them and now she had outlived what little family there had been on either side of their families. What would she do?
The unanswered question passed quickly from her mind as she steadily gripped the bus’s handrail and managed the three rubber stairs, exchanged morning greetings with Tywanda and settled comfortably into her favorite south-facing seat.