The book I am reading for OR this semester at school is called Riding the Bus with my Sister. This is the story of Beth, a mentally retarded woman, who rides the buses of her small Pennsylvania city every day. She is occasionally visited by her older sister, Rachel, a professor with a busy schedule and no life to call her own “My life, I told myself, bore little resemblance to the lives of other workers in corporate America…But who was I kidding? I was like most of my peers: hyperbusy, hypercritical, hyperventilating” (Simon 7). They are perfect opposites, despite the fact that they were born only 11 months apart “I struggle awake and into my clothes: black sweater, black leggings…She owns a wardrobe of blazingly bright colors and can leap out of bed before dawn” (Simon 3). During one of her infrequent visits, Beth asks Rachel to ride the buses with her for one year. Reluctantly, Rachel agrees, and takes a journey with her sister that changes her life forever.
On the matter of the bus riding, Rachel confesses “Some days its sheer oddness baffled me; other days I was disheartened by her choosing to master bus routes rather than doing something productive, like a job. I had long embraced eccentrics in novels and iconoclasts in the newspaper stories, yet I was too dismayed by Beth’s particular devotion to the busses to be willing to acquaint myself with her life” (Simon 11). She is clearly ashamed of her sister and ashamed of herself for feeling that way. For Rachel, Beth has always been an “oddity” who she cannot accept into her own organized life.
Simon, Rachel. Riding the Bus with my Sister. New York: Penguin Group, 2003.
4 comments:
This sounds like a a really interesting book. I'm excited to read more of your posts about it. I just have one thing that I am a little confused about. Did she ride the bus with her sister to and from place or just randomly around the city? Great job though! I especially think that the quote about their differences realy supports your ideas.
We can see clearly that Rachel is faced with a huge moral decision. On how to feel about riding the bus with her mentally-disabled sister. She may think to herself in a certain way, like being embarrassed, but soon corrects her thinking and subsides society's beliefs to her own morals. With sympathy for her sister, Rachel is able to move past what society says on 'normal' and make the right decision.
It seems like Rachel is unacustomed to the simplicity of just riding the bus. Beth's life just seems simple, there's really no other word for it. And, Rachel needs to become aware of the simplicity in life and just accept it. That's what it seems like this book will be about.
The contrasting sisters really seem to come from different worlds. One one hand, we have the working sister who struggles to wake up into her dreary life, and on the other hand we have the sister who, even though she isn't working, can find a calling, or really hobby, for herself. I think, I could be totally off though because this is just what I think somebody might feel like, that besides Rachel's embarrassment because of her sister, she could also be harboring a wish that she could have been born as Beth instead, because then she would have been able to do things like ride buses for a year.
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