Worried I would sleep through two alarm clocks set for 5am, I kept waking up, trying to decipher the red numbers without my glasses on: 1:05am, 2:36am, 3:13am, 3:49am. Finally, at 4:27am, I decided to just get up and get the day started. Exhausted but acutely aware, I drove down the gravel cabin drive, with my high beams cutting through the morning fog. As I squinted to make out the street signs that I tried to remember I had to take a left, then a right, then another right at, I rolled down the window and took a deep breath in. Ahhh… mountain air. Not familiar enough to remember but surprisingly comforting and able to zero me back into the present.
Though it’s a pretty ridiculous hour to be driving to an airport (and on my vacation, no less!), I am once again grateful for this job that allows me to jet off to DFW for the day, then return to my girls the next day, to rejoin in our over-indulgence of lounging.
But more importantly, I was offered a sacred space – mostly unnoticed – until I realize I have been driving in the dark, in the silence, with only the brisk wind stopping me from zoning out completely. During my moments of prayer, as much as I try to let the spirit guide my thoughts, I usually end up retreating to list mode: “Please bless Mom & Dad and Grandma & Grandpa and Arielle & Lennox and all those who’ve hurt me and all those who’ve I’ve hurt… and may there be world peace. Amen.”All good sentiments, of course, but I wonder if my words are simply on replay, does it have the same meaning? Does it reach the universe with the same gusto as my once sobbing-on-the-floor plea,“Oh God, I just can’t do this on my own anymore. I give up. Please help me make it through this night.”
In the car, I feel as if I am an open vessel, waiting to be filled with something: some insight, some wisdom, some aha moment. If I think about it too long and start to literally ask questions about the instant, the trance is soon overrun by thoughts crowding my brain. So I try to stay focused on what is presented to me, instead of me trying to give meaning to everything I see. It’s a fine balance, since I like it when situations can be fit neatly into a black & white box and put on the shelf as, “that’s why this happened” and “this is what was meant by this.”
I am also trying to stay very focused on the act of steering my car because the only thing worse than driving on a curvy road out of the mountains at 6 in the morning is ME driving on a curvy road out of the mountains at 6 in the morning. But before I know it, without even conjuring it up on my own, the image is in front of me. The art piece I made after I had realized turning 30 (and the events that followed that fateful birthday) would be the ultimate curvy, unpredictable, dangerous, seemingly never-ending spiral downward.... It was there, in front of me again, the reflection of such a tender, painful time; and now, the sweet relief of a more unswerving road on which I currently travel. For just a split second, I was reassured that I would not be left alone when I, inevitably, will be on another curvy road again. It was a preemptive confirmation of faith without any crisis forcing it to show itself.
Suddenly, the moment was gone, the list of prayers was recited and signs for the Asheville Regional Airport began to appear. I am grateful for the sacred space offered to me and look forward to the next unexpected moment I can rest in it.
