Personal Connections "The Color of Water" #1

There was an emotional scene for the author when he just finished school and got off of the bus and he couldn't see his mother at the bus stop as usual. In his head, he think of some things his mother might have said, that explains why she wasn't there. Some of the things she said, was that he need to learn how to get home from the bus stop and for him not to tell anyone about where he lives, if he gets lost. As he look around for his mother, the other parents at the bus stop ask him what was his house address . He did not answer them, like his mother had told him to do. A man told him his mother was coming, he ignored him completely . Then he saw his brother and sisters in ragged clothes and weird hairdos , that's when he realized that his mother was just late to pick him up.

I have a personal connection to this scene because as a little kid, I did a similar action of not finding my mother at the bus stop but instead of getting off the bus, i stayed on the bus thinking she will know where I was. As I pass other bus stops that I've never seen that's when I start to panic. In my head, I think she doesn't know these places how would she get me without knowing where to go. At that moment I burst into tears thinking I'm going to another country lost forever thinking it has been hours since I passed my stop, when it was just two neighborhoods down. As I'm bawling in the chair someone told the bus driver a child is crying, so she stops the bus comes back to check on me. During that moment I could not talk so I mutter everything I could bring out until I got it together and explained why I was crying. I was unable to tell her reaction at that time . I think it was a slight enraged but sympathetic reaction once she realized that she passed my stop, she went back to the front to drive the bus and dropped me off at my stop where I saw my mother. That was why I had a very interesting connection to the story because we both saw the situation incorrectly and reacted very abnormal, then we should have reacted. As the book progress I hope to have many more connection to the characters and to the story James McBride is constructing.