This time, I’ll start with the stick:

The victim and the vigilante

In the middle of the night on Thursday/Friday, one of my younger brothers happened to look out his kitchen window in time to catch two people breaking into the car of my other younger brother (they’re roommates). He (the first little brother) ran them off and then stayed up for hours to wait for the police and fill out the report. This is fourth car break-in/theft they’ve had to deal with in three years. And no, their cars aren’t that nice.

Now, the carrot (and you thought it was that picture of my adorable little brothers):

Funky buses and early party exits aside, I will always prefer buses to cars because of the sense of community I feel when I ride. My June 28th Real Change column, also known as a day in the life of a bus chick:

A Shared Ride

By CARLA SAULTER

Saturday, 1:25 p.m., southbound #36.

The bus is crowded already, only halfway down Third. I am lucky to find a seat facing forward–one of the last. The shy six-year old riding with her grandfather and three younger siblings is not so lucky. She stands, holding the pole nearest the front, while the rest sit in the sideways seats, speaking a language I guess to be Vietnamese. The little girl clutches the pole tighter when the bus lurches. This happens frequently, sometimes several times per block. (The driver, you see, is still working out his relationship to the trolley brakes.) I consider offering my seat, but I am far away, and they are sticking together.

A tall, thin man wearing a denim shirt and a Mariners cap gets on a few blocks after me. His body is erect and strong, but the steel gray hair and weathered skin betray his advanced age. He stands across the aisle from the little girl, holding on to the opposite pole, until two teenage boys offer their seats. Both the girl and the old man look suspicious, the old man no doubt weighing his pride against his desire to rest, the little girl perhaps remembering her lessons about strangers. After a bit of coaxing, the old man smiles and takes the seat. The little girl continues to cling to the pole.

In the seats closest to the driver (who is still struggling with the brakes) are two women — one in short shorts that (perhaps for the first time this year) expose her ghost-white legs, the other covered from head (a big, floppy, canvas hat) to toe (socks and laced shoes) despite the 80-degree heat.

At Yesler, a preteen boy followed by an entourage of adults carrying Gap shopping bags races down the aisle on his roller tennis shoes. He barely misses a barrel-chested man clutching two hot-pink, two-pound hand weights, which he has been curling periodically since I got on. In the International District, a withered old woman manages to climb aboard without the aid of the lift, despite the broomstick — weighted on either end with a garbage bag stuffed with empty aluminum cans — that rests on her frail shoulders.

And the shopping bags, hand weights, and aluminum cans are just the beginning. My fellow riders, who fill every seat and then some, carry languages, memories, hometowns. Loved ones. Losses. Anger. Aches, pains, and diseases. New shoes, romance novels, Bibles, gossip magazines. Prescriptions. Spare change. Telephones. Bedrolls. Clean underwear.

And many, many stories. Stories that are now connected as a result of a single, shared ride.

This time, mine.

In honor of Mother’s Day, my March 29th Real Change column:

Back on the 8

Every time I hear Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” I am transported to the house where I grew up and to the joy of dancing in the living room with my father on a Saturday afternoon. “The Men All Pause” by Klymaxx reminds me of my older sister, Carey, gorgeous and powerful and singing along with the record player in our childhood bedroom. Anything by Black Sheep takes me back to my college days, when my girlfriend, Monique, and I would beg our dorm-mates for a ride to the current “it” club and dance ourselves dizzy to “This or That.”

Buses, too, have associations for me. The 2 was the route I took to my elementary school. On one ride, a schoolmate got “beat up” (read: slapped and pushed a few times until the bus driver intervened) by some older girls. To this day, I cannot ride a 2 without remembering that incident. I was on the 545 the first time I saw my fiancé, and I will always associate it with the thrill of our first few months together, when the endless, inch-by-inch crawl across the lake seemed far too short. The 194, the “airport bus,” reminds me of all of my best adventures, including (and especially) my trip to Paris last May.

Then there’s the 8, which takes me from my house in the Central District to 15th Ave. on Capitol Hill. I love 15th — August Wilson vibes at Victrola, Frida Kahlo coasters at Casita, scrambles and coffee cake at Coastal Kitchen — and have long associated the 8 with this marvelous street.

In January of 2004, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time in as many years, and my reasons for traveling to 15th Ave. changed. I rode the 8 to Group Health for surgeries, chemo appointments, CT scans, and emergency-room visits. My once-favored route came to symbolize sickness, sadness, and fear. After the cancer went into remission last October, I avoided that bus, along with everything else that reminded me of my mother’s illness.

Last week, I received devastating news: my mother’s cancer has returned. This time, it is not curable. Friday morning, I rode the 8 to meet her for the first of what will undoubtedly be many terrifying and unpleasant hospital visits. But the memories that came to me during that ride were not of toxic drugs, or blood clots, or chances of survival. They were of the Vogue magazines and heated blankets in the infusion center, the chalky “banana” barium shakes in radiology, and the beautiful view from the fifth floor of the main building. They were of endless waits in urgent care — one of which was rewarded by a visit from the cutest emergency-room doctor ever to walk the halls of a hospital — and of diva outfits temporarily replaced by hospital gowns.

The 8 reminds me of laughter. It reminds me of my mother.

Today we took the Water Taxi over to my parents’ side of Elliott Bay, and the whole darn family (me, Adam, both brothers, one brother’s girlfriend, Mom, and Dad)–minus my sister, who lives in California–had brunch at Salty’s.

It’s been a weekend of boats, mothers, and celebrations.