Magnolia the Homebus

I’m sitting on the school bus that we bought from the Hoke County, NC school district. We spent the month of March removing 25 years of the purpose and form of its previous life and converting it into a space we might call home. The district’s depot, which housed her, was on Magnolia St., and the bus has naturally taken on the name and persona of that quintessentially southern dame. Our steel magnolia has traveled some distance in time, place and role to find herself in this pine grove surrounded by the fertile rolling fields of Vermont’s Champlain valley that is currently her berth.

Like Magnolia, our lives have shifted from floating on the river Cancer to moving along its edges. The river, alien but familiar is still present in our lives as it flows sometimes along, sometimes through, and often out of sight, but it is not the center and source of our existence. Zpora has returned to her plans and dreams, forever changed. And ironically, we find ourselves at the beginning again – the place where an open ended freedom stretches in front of us waiting to be claimed and the past stretches behind us waiting for the story’s ending.

Attached is a slide show that documents Magnolia’s transformation from school transportation vehicle to homebus. There is, for me, a poetry in her changes that somehow reflects our experience over the last 23 months, but that poem is still unwritten. Enjoy the pictures. Ruby