Bus Story: A Radiant Heart

She fairly sparkles. Her periwinkle dress has sunshine yellow and pale kiwi green accents. Her knit sun-hat matches, with concentric circles of the pale blue, yellow and green, with a single band of tangerine orange. She wears a serviceable but charming cardigan because, at her age, the air is almost always chilly. Her earrings are large dangly aquamarine-colored stones. All pales compared to her classic cat-eye glasses, decked out with tiny rhinestones, just around the eyes. As riders climb aboard, she looks up from her book and, again, sparkles, with a warm smile, beaming from her deeply wrinkled face. I don’t know if she is a Good Witch, the Fairie Queen Mab, Miss Piggle-Wiggle, or just a manifestation of my grandmothers and grand aunts that my mind has conjured after looking at a genealogy website for too many hours. Whatever the case, her presence started my day with a warm smile, and that’s magical enough.