In the BeginningImage: Nashville MTA

Being new is hard.

It’s more evident and acceptable in babies than adults. Comfort is given to the newborns and the just-turned-a-year-olds and the toddlers who cry when they first experience pain or shy away from someone they’ve not yet encountered, but that level of concern doesn’t always transition into adulthood. By then, we are expected to know things, even without being told. Assumed knowledge…

But even with that assumed knowledge, even when we’ve had others before us tell us that college will be the best years of our lives or we’ll come to appreciate naps when we grow up or a broken heart won’t actually kill us or one day we’ll look back and…

Does it really mean we should know how to act or react when we experience another new something? Does someone else’s tale of woe or success determine our emotions or ability?

Nope.

Being new is hard, even on the bus.

My first date with the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority was a test. Molly, my 2001 Chevrolet Tracker, was under the weather and waiting for surgery. At the time, somewhere between summer and fall 2010, I was working part-time for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, conveniently located on the campus of Vanderbilt University, conveniently my graduate school alma mater. Being in familiar territory is good when you’re out of a car. With some research, I found that I could walk across campus and down Edgehill Avenue, where I would pick up the #17 (one of two buses that led to 100 Oaks) to 10th Avenue South and Woodmont, leaving me with an estimated 10 minute walk home.

I like knowing what to expect and what shoes to wear, though they will never be high heels.

Sitting at the bus stop for the very first time with a $5.00 bill in hand, I was feeling very ready. I knew I had more than enough to cover a one-way trip and thought I might use the change for a congratulatory coffee treat the next day.

That is not how change works with public transportation.

I must have been wearing the “I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m very excited about it!” look when I stepped on and promptly offered the driver my crispy Lincoln. He knew he had a first-timer. He asked where I was going and I gave him my well-researched destination. He shook his head, just a little, directed me to the payment box, and told me that I would get a change card instead of actual change. That wasn’t part of my plan and I didn’t understand what a change card would actually do, though I was certain it wouldn’t pay for that congratulatory coffee. After seeing my confusion, he  graciously offered a one-time pass for the very, very, very obvious newbie.

As we drew close to my stop, my hands were sweaty. Something about almost being there made me simultaneously nervous and happy.

Then we turned left.

I panicked. We had passed the place where I was supposed to get off the bus, the place where I told the driver I wanted to go, the place I had RESEARCHED, and now I was sitting in a moving vehicle that was going somewhere else and I didn’t know what to do.

The generous man who had offered me a courtesy ride saw it. I caught him glancing back in the mirror to check in on the lady who had missed her stop and when he read what must have been an anxious face he kindly asked, “Was that where you said you had wanted to go?”

Oh, good, I thought to myself. He just forgot but it’s okay because now he remembered and I will get home and not be stuck on the #17 forever.

“Um, yes. What do I do?”

“We’re coming back that way. You just gotta pull that cord up there when you’re ready.”

Oh, God. So embarrassing. First the change, now the cord.

“Can’t letcha ride free all day now.”

Thank God. He made a joke. First the freebie, now the laugh.

I would get to know that kind man as one of the many who helped me get from one place to the next on the Nashville MTA. I would make bus friends and bus driver friends. I would share stories about my life and listen to stories from other lives as we sat in traffic or cruised down Broadway to Music City Central, the hub of bus life. I would ride routes that signified a change in my story, a new relationship or the end of a promising one. I would ride a route with a number that reminded me of a brother I lost to suicide. I would ride a route that took me to Planned Parenthood, and another that took me to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. And before I left Nashville in December 2014, after 6 years of living in Music City and almost 4 without a car, I would ride every route on the Nashville MTA.

Somewhere near the end of my Nashville story, though I’m not so sure it will or should end, I was riding the #1 for the sake of checking off another route before bidding farewell to a city that had changed my life, more than once. I was both heartbroken and reassured. I knew I needed to go, even if it hurt.

And it did hurt. I still remember.

Because I was riding a bus with the same destination by another path (religious pluralism, anyone?), I spent that ride to 100 Oaks remembering my very first attempt at bus life, smiling over my transformation from a lady with a $5.00 bill and no knowledge of the cord into a lady who would suggest the #10 over the #25 to get to St. Thomas Midtown because the #25 covered a lot of territory and the #10 was a straight shot down Charlotte. I remembered people I would likely never see again because we wouldn’t be riding the bus together anymore. There were some I would truly miss, others I wouldn’t mind striking from the “awkwardly avoid by pretending to be on the phone” list. There were sites I wanted to take with me, others I wanted to leave behind.

In the midst of those routes and memories, there was a project. This project. The project I unknowingly moved to Nashville to begin writing, and the project I knowingly left Nashville to complete.

It has been three years since my last bus ride in Music City. These are the stories that keep me connected. They allow me to love and grieve and celebrate and honor people and memories and challenges. They are sermons and think pieces and maybes. They are fingerprints everywhere, reminding me that even though someone else has been here or there before me, at some point they were sitting at the bus stop for the very first time.

Being new is hard, and that’s okay.