To the "Shut Up" Mother in the Back of the Bus

Your baby has a right to cry.
Your baby has a right to tell you somthing’s wrong.
You have a duty to listen to her.
A hot and crowded greyhound bus on a rough hiway in the dark wet nite is an awkward, stifled and uncomfortable place even for those of us grown used to grids and orderly systems of repressing our humanity for the sake of efficiency.
It’s a nitemare for one who can’t see over the seat, let alone see the sense in such crazy self-punishing behaviour.
We’re all on the bus cuz we “gotta” go somewhere.
I’m sure you feel that you and yer babies “gotta” go wharever you’re goin.
But if to get there, you gotta take Greyhound, you gotta be prepared for a cryin baby. We’re all prepared for cryin babies on the bus, even as childless riders.
Be a mother. Be a loving mother. Be a mother-lovin mother and appease yer kid’s worry with love and reassurance if you want her to quiet.
Tellin her to “shut up” just makes her think “aw man – as if it’s not enough that I’m on this smelly death machine with a buncha lack-wit robots, my own caretaker is an incompetent loudmouth with no idea why she poked that guy and brought us into the world.”
So we all got a right to call you on bein a bad mother, cuz evry kid you pop out and screw up is one more screwd-up adult we gotta try n untangle later on. N I’d really just rather hear you love her now, than see her grow up into a baby-makin alleykat or him into a heavy-breathin peeker-perv in twisted, hereditarily-perverted ways of
seeking love
later on.

Seekin love, later on, john houx

Location: between chicago & indianapolis, en route to new orleans
Reading: Julia Butterfly Hill, “The Legacy of Luna”

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