Brandon sat by a window. I could see his face. He waved to me. I waved back and as the bus pulled away, I said to myself, ‘There goes my whole world.’ That yellow bus with its flimsy metal sides and its driver I didn’t know from Adam chariotted away what was in effect everything to me. And at that moment, I realized what I had felt the day of his birth. Terror. Not just apprehension. Cold, stark terror. You can fear illness or old age or death. But there’s nothing like that small stone of terror that sat in my belly as I watched that bus pull away.
