Bus evacuation drills in elementary and middle school punctuated the rowdy ride to school with a bit of drama.

I liked them. 

Too much.

Two boys, usually tall and a grade older, opened the rear emergency exit, jumped out, then stood on either side of the door, offering a hand to anyone who needed it as the rest of us dropped to the ground (which was a considerable distance as I recall). On the best drill days, these boys were Chris and Eddie. Or Skip and Reese. Or Brian Rowe.  

I loved this exercise because imagining there was a reason to evacuate was exciting—Bus 98 on the tracks! And because I liked the momentary grasp of the boys’ hands. 

Conversely, I thought of myself as self-sufficient, so a cool, effortless jump and a nailed landing were imperative. This is why, instead of moving to the threshold and dropping to the pavement as instructed, one day, in a moment of unbridled 9-year-old joy, I jumped up in order to jump out—cracking my head on the doorframe so hard I could have knocked myself unconscious—only I had to pretend it was nothing—staggering nonchalantly a safe distance away from our bus to readjust my hairband.

Bus 98 (The Old Cheese Crate) was a big yellow box with no shock absorbers and a nation where anarchy reigned. There was the unbearable tension of getting on first, hugging the window seat while the cutest boy at the stop just beyond yours made his way down the aisle, books pressed to one hip instead of hugged like a baby the way we girls held ours. Enduring his slow, assessing approach, the pause at your empty seat, the swing in, the settling down, and the I-want-to-die-tension of adolescent proximity was a daily agony we happily anticipated. 

We were so loud, shouting, throwing pencils, bouncing over the bumps; I don’t know how the driver kept his wits about him, ignoring us in his wide rectangular rearview, as we broke all the rules. Yes, there was covert gum chewing and cigarette smoking in the back of the bus, some couples forever immortalized in magic marker graffiti, but the day the boys used a Bic lighter to set Peezie Pritchard’s ponytail on fire, I went to the vice principal. Yes, it was me! (Sorry, sorry, sorry.) I’m the reason we got assigned seats. 

I’ve lightened up since then. 

It just felt safe being a rule-abider. Even self-imposed rules provided some security in an otherwise amorphous family structure, so after recovering from the head-whacking debacle, I was excited to become a designated class “Safety.” “Safeties” got to wear a white diagonal canvas strap across our chests that buckled around our waists and had a silver badge attached to it like we were short cops. I think we were supposed to help the Walkers cross the street, but since no one in his right mind would have relied on us for this, we kept order in the halls as kids raced for the buses at 3:00. I didn’t want the job, and I don’t remember performing any duties. I did covet the white strap and the badge.   

As the bus began to empty out on the ride home, we’d rearrange ourselves. We’d spread out, turn sideways in the seats with our backs against the windows and our knees bent sideways, taking up the whole surface, tentative owners of new real estate. The windows half opened, the wind rushing through, and the smell of fuel and exhaust eventually gave way to the scent of pine woods and river. 

We’d glance around, reassessing our relationships as they became subtly more intimate with the lessening density and increasing eye contact. But as the bus became emptier and emptier it began to feel lonelier and lonelier. When I got home, I’d be on my own. No one to tell me to do the homework I would do anyway as the pleaser I was—no one to say not to swim alone or take the boat out. I’d be my own Safety.

The emptiness that crept inside as the number of riders dwindled required a subtle emotional adjustment after each stop, like when the class a year ahead graduates and suddenly, you’re the seniors. You come back the following year with no one above you, thinking, Cool! We’re at the head of the line! But that newly vacated space is a hole. Friends have moved on to new grades, new lives. You will not see many of them again. It feels foreign until time normalizes what is new to what is familiar.

It’s the way it feels when a family must reconfigure as siblings leave home. Or if a parent leaves. And as an adult, it’s your children who get off the bus one at a time, at stop after stop, until they are all launched into lives of their own, and it’s you who reorganizes what’s left of the original family design. 

And when your parents die, suddenly you’re the senior class, slamming metal locker doors, dominating the lunch line with no one above you, and it’s not all that cool anymore. 

But we are an adaptable species, beloveds, good at closing ranks, making a new organism that thrives even when we’ve lost a limb. We are evolving every minute, albeit at such a glacial pace, we can’t see our hearts contract and enlarge again and again as we let go, then recalculate, making a new design, maybe even a beautiful one, of loss. Eventually, even loss evolves, and we come to call it change.

Did you know that if our species was wiped out in a cataclysmic event… Asteroid! Nuclear holocaust! and there was no bus evacuation to save us; as a species that has arisen from single-celled organisms without hearts, brains, or sight to become us, explorers of the stars, we could evolve all over again, 80,000 times before the end of the world? 

Is that not remarkable? Homo sapiens could re-emerge from single-celled organisms to cosmic adventurers in search of the beginning of creation 80,000 more times before the planet is absorbed by the ballooning red star of our sun. 

That’s 80,000 more opportunities to keep each other safe, to reach for the hand that is offered, to drop from the back of the bus with gratitude and grace.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

Last year I adopted a small, black-and-white terrier-poodle mix with one ear that points straight up like a SETI radio telescope listening for space squirrels and one that flops down. Her name was Leah, and I made no attempt to change it. She already had an identity, and I respected that, although when I walk her in the neighborhood, the most frequent comment from strangers is, “He’s just the cutest little boy!”

Leah kisses these fools indiscriminately. 

She was a mix of many breeds, so out of curiosity, I had her DNA decoded. The result was sixteen pages of proclivities based on the variety of breeds she represents. This test also revealed that Leah has a brother, Frodo, living in College Park! I immediately felt we should pack up the car and go visit the rellies. She has other sibs too: Petey and Pip, JoJo and Brinkley, Daisy, and let us not forget, Lucy Penrod, who’s digging life in Florida. Siblings are a gift, and Leah’s were an unexpected find, but another surprise was in store.

You know I am intrigued by those with the ability to tap into a field of consciousness that is available to all but inaccessible to most. The energy field researchers at Duke University have determined we don’t access primarily because we don’t know it’s there. 

We don’t seek what we think isn’t possible. We don’t see what we’re not looking for. We live with the lid on.

But last summer, I had a session with an intuitive who has cultivated this ability for many years and out of the blue he said, “I see a yellow dog around you. A big dog.” 

 “I had a yellow lab,” I said, “Kaya. She died 5 years ago.” 

“She’s still near you,” he said, “but I see a small dog with you now. Black and white.” I thought, “Holy cow,” but I said, “Yes, Leah, I adopted her last year.” He was quiet a minute as if listening, then said dispassionately, “I’m hearing that Kaya sent you Leah.” 

Could this be true?

I’d been walking dogs as a volunteer at the SPCA in an effort to do something good in this world within my limited skillset, although whether I was an asset as a dog walker is debatable. Those EZ harnesses! Getting one on was like roping a calf on steroids, one leaping the height of my head and spinning like a happy dolphin in a 5 by 8-foot kennel run. More than once, I had two of the dogs’ legs in one hole, and there was the time, out on the trail, when I felt the lead go limp, looked down, and saw I’d been walking an empty harness. The dog I thought I was walking was standing 20 feet away on a narrow wooden bridge over a stream, just staring at me. We froze mano a mano, like two gunslingers in a Western, equally confounded by the dog’s sudden change in fortune, each wondering who would be the first to act on it. 

So by “sent,” I theorized, my dog in spirit had prompted me to notice a very sick, ratty little rescue in the darkest part of the kennel, sporting stitches on her belly, parasites in her bloodstream, and a cone on her head. 

And maybe choosing to walk Leah out of the barking pandemonium of 50 much rowdier inmates was also a response to a nudge. Perhaps impulsively adopting her after five years of volunteering was a choice divinely inspired as well. Who can say in what form inspiration manifests? Maybe sometimes it shows up as an inordinately pretty yellow lab sending her empty owner someone new to love. 

Once you open the door to the idea that there is a source of divine wisdom in constant conversation with you, an unlimited host of help is at your disposal. For me, it’s learning to pay attention to what draws my attention. 

I have read that you can actually choose a sign that will be your signal from someone you love on the other side. Over breakfast one morning after Mr. Oliver’s lovely, brilliant mother died, we decided the sign of her presence should be the appearance of goats in unlikely places. She had raised goats on the down-low in an upscale suburban neighborhood, making her own cheese and yogurt for several years. We agreed on the sign, laughing at the unlikelihood of seeing it, as I said aloud, “Mary Jane if you want us to know you are present, make goats appear.” I put my coffee cup in the dishwasher, climbed the stairs to my office, and turned on my computer. To my astonishment, thirteen goats appeared on the screen, standing amidst the branches of an argan tree. Shockingly out of place (goats in a tree?) I discovered they climb for the berries in this drought-plagued part of Morocco, and the image was a commercial stock photo. I’d never seen it before.

So, I’m currently at an impasse in two important family relationships, important because your relationships with your brothers and sisters are the longest of your life. They have been with you from the beginning. Your years together in this world predate your children and for most of us, outlast your parents. As I write of this rift, a promotional email from Barnes and Noble has popped up on my screen. Because it captures my attention, I pay attention.

“Explore the complexities of sibling relationships, resentments that threaten to tear the family apart,” it says. Coincidence? Maybe. I read the rest of the message. “The Complexity of Family. Learn more.” There was a time I would have dismissed that as meaningless. Now I’m not so sure.

I was walking Leah down by the park the other evening, listening to a book by James Van Praagh through my airpods, when I noticed a Mini Cooper parked beside the sidewalk. As I approached, I saw a sign in the back window—not a bumper sticker– a sign that said, “Please. Be patient.” There was no context like “new driver” or “baby on board.” Just a quiet request. 

That behest would benefit my life in general, but I needed more specific help with this current conflict. 

The next night Leah was trotting down the same road to the park, and the car was gone. But on the way back to the house, my attention was drawn to a Subaru parked near where it had been.

Bizarrely, it, too, had a sign in the back window–not a bumper sticker– but a sign placed at eye level. Leah was in a squirrel standoff, so I gave the leash a tug to get closer. This sign, again, without context, read, “You are never alone.” I was smiling now, so very sure this is true, as my conversation with spirit continues to evolve. 

As Leah and I headed home on this sweet indigo summer night, James Van Praagh said in my ear, “Family is the river through which the soul flows.” 

Where will we go, I wonder?

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.