When I was twelve years old, I knew exactly what I wanted to give my mother for Christmas (long before I became a Muslim): a beautiful calendar with photos of scenes from around the world which I’d seen at a local bookstore. But I wanted it to be a complete surprise, so I couldn’t just tag along on one of her shopping trips with the car; she’d see the store’s bag when I got back to the car and know where I’d been. 
She’d start asking questions. I decided I’d have to make the trip alone on the bus.
Now, in the California suburbs where I grew up, it wasn’t strange that I had never ridden on the bus before. Everyone had a car. Most families had two. Public transit was only for the elderly, disabled, and very poor, so this was a very big deal for me. There was no internet in those days, so I had to go to the library to get bus schedules and maps, and I had to plan my return for a time when my mother would be out so I could smuggle her gift into the house without suspicion. Meticulously, I planned out my route, my timings, and counted my coins. And when the time came, I embarked secretly on my mission. It all sounds so silly now, having planned and executed travels all over the world, but I was nervous.
When my bus came by—twenty minutes late—I tried to look like I knew what I was doing, as I clumsily dropped my change into the glass box next to the driver. I tried to look like a seasoned straphanger as I made my way to the seats near the rear exit. I sat and began counting the stops, looking for the landmarks that would tell me it was time to pull the cord signaling the driver to stop for me.
As I sat anxiously gazing out the window, an elderly woman smiled, asked if she could sit down next to me, and started talking. At first, I just wanted her to be quiet; I was afraid she’d make me miss my stop. But soon it became clear she wasn’t a crazy woman babbling to her herself. She truly wanted to engage me in conversation. If it were to happen to me now, the New Yorker in me might just move to another seat. But, thankfully, I was an unjaded twelve-year-old California boy.
She introduced herself as Margaret Coffee—“like the drink,” she said. I’ll never forget that name. She must have been somewhere in her 70s, and was a self-made transit activist and organizer. When she’d gotten too old to drive she’d started taking buses everywhere, and had discovered how inadequate they were for the needs of people like her. On her bus trips she started talking to other disgruntled travelers, and soon found herself leading them. Retired, she traveled and campaigned for better public transit. She had even traveled to Washington, D.C. to testify at Congressional hearings. She certainly wasn’t leading the quiet retirement “befitting” an old woman.
But what struck the twelve-year-old boy was less her accomplishments—however impressive—than her kindness. She found the anxious neophyte traveler and wanted to put him at ease—to let him forget his traveling so he could enjoy the journey.
Today, I’ve been many places and done many things. I, too, am a self-made activist of sorts. I campaign on and for an information superhighway, not the local bus routes of forty years ago. I crusade for digital literacy, sustainable education, and communication without borders. But I’ve also learned that without borders to cross, there is no travel worthy of the name. Mine has been a slow, plodding journey on Life’s “local”, with lots of transfers. I don’t know just when the journey started, but surely before that day. Nonetheless, Margaret Coffee—“like the drink”—stirred and awakened something in my veins. And while she may not have started me on my journey, it was she who patted my hand and said, ”Here’s your stop.”
We all have Margaret Coffees in our lives—people who mysteriously appear, point us in some direction, and then vanish. But that doesn’t make them any less extraordinary. Would I be someone like whom I have become if she’d never been there? Certainly. Perhaps, then, what is so remarkable about Margaret Coffee is simply that forty years later, long after she has passed away, and perhaps her children have passed away, she still sits with me on the bus of memory, urging me to travel the journey of life, yet making it all less stressful.
And after all these years, when I finally someday reach the end, I trust her to be there to tell me, “Here is your stop.” Thank you, Margaret. Till then, I’ll save a seat for you.
