headlights through fog
by bam
the reason my heart skipped, twirled, did a jig ’round the curb, is, i’d been waiting. holding my breath. praying. beckoning guardian angels to please get him home.
not ’cause i’m some sappy ol’ wife with nothing to do but wait by the curb in my curlers with bonbons.
heck, there were children to tuck into bed. and dishes to scrub in the sink.
but after the phone call, none of that mattered. not so much anymore.
you might recall–it was yesterday only–that the man who i love, the man we’ll call mr. parallel life, had grabbed the keys off the ring, hopped in the ol’ wagon, taken off for parts 200 miles away.
well, mr. parallel, late in the day, had wrapped it all up, was minding his business, steering for home. when all of a sudden there sounded a rather loud boom. that boom, he soon realized, had just come from him. or his left rear tire, that is.
thing was, he was out on the interstate where 18-wheel rigs think nothing of rolling by at, oh, 800 miles an hour. or so it felt. tucked off to the side, just after a bend, where the road starts to come up what we in the middle parts of the country call a hill. really, it was the slightest of slopes.
or so i know because i grilled him for every last detail.
but that wasn’t till later, when he and the tire in shreds had come through the fog, into my jiggety arms.
the hours between were, like the cumulus clouds of mist that rolled in, sifted through trees, settled on lawns, made of the street a scene from an old hitchcock movie, eery and quite rather scary.
he called right away, just before dinner. called to say, well, all is fine except that i’ve just blown a tire, and i’m out in the middle of nowhere, and the darkness is just ’round the bend. the trucks barreling by seem to think this is that stretch of ol’ indiana where the 500 revs up its engines.
and then maybe he stuck the phone out the window, ’cause all the way here, i could hear how those semis shimmied and shook down the highway.
let me just say, a girl with barely an ounce of imagination might see pictures of very big trucks veering awfully close to that shoulder. not me. i have imagination overdrive. i pictured right on to the front page of the newspaper, gathering the kiddies, draping my sorrowful self all in black.
oh, lord. time started ticking in very slow motion. here i was, scared and basically helpless. there he was, on the side of the interstate, in the dim-turning-to-dark, waiting for a tow truck to rumble out of the blackness.
i called here and there. tried to be helpful. offered to go buy a tire, drive it down there. called my friends at the gas station, who assured me the measly round object in the back of the volvo–the thing that looks like a make-believe tire–could actually safely hobble him home. thing was, he’d have to get off of the interstate. drive home straight through gary. which, if you were from this part of the world, you might know is not exactly a traipse through the candyland forest.
and so began the vigil for someone you love. that close encounter with what might go wrong that reminds us how essential is their breath in our ear.
we have, i imagine, all waited. and worried. not known how or when a drama would end. we have, some of us, seen dramas end achingly bad. we have stood in hospital hallways. heard doctors summon unspeakable words.
“i’m so sorry,” is all the doctor once said. i had to ask, “is he dead?” spell it out, tell me, because at this moment there’s fog and i am finding it terribly hard to wrap my head around what you are saying.
i have not yet–but i know it’s coming, can feel it too breathing right down my neck–waited for a child with keys and a car and a curfew that’s blown. maybe i’ll be lucky. maybe mine–the older one, at least–won’t blow a curfew. but still there will be minutes that turn into hours, where i am waiting. remembering news headlines. imagining.
maybe i’m wired with just enough fear that i am often tamping it down. putting out sparks before they turn into fires. i have a mind that takes off like a kite in a hurricane. it pitches and swirls, it crashes and splinters in pieces. it needs some sort of leash. and a short one, if you’ve got one just lying around.
to wait for someone you love is to sift through the core of your life. to realize the threads of the net that they weave, the net that keeps you from flailing, from falling.
you hold hands with your children at dinnertime prayers. you squeeze a little harder, remind them you’re there, and, while you’re at it, so is the God you are asking to bring home their papa.
you look then out the window. you see that it’s gotten all blurry. and no, it’s not you and your worry. there’s a fog, a thick one, rolled in from the lake. and it’s ratcheting up the equation.
now you have a husband hobbling home on a make-believe wheel in a fog thick as smooshed peas. and he’s taking the side roads, besides.
drawn somehow by the spine-tingling beauty, the mystery, really, of these clouds that have reshaped the landscape, this fog that has smoothed all the harsh edges, wrapped halos on each of the light posts, you step into it.
leave behind the warmth of the house. find yourself staring straight down the street, into the mouth of the darkness. you are imploring now. you think of the song you sang so long ago. “come home, daddy, come home.” you walked to the corner and waited to see his little blue falcon. the car that magically brought home your hero. every time. except for the last time. when the doctor answered, “yes, he is dead.”
you stand in the fog in the street. you know, any minute, you’ll see the lights in the distance. the little round glow, two glows actually. and the glow will come near you, will pull to the curb. and there will be someone’s daddy. someone wide-eyed upstairs in bed. ’cause his daddy was due hours ago. and he’s only just now coming in through the door.
the vigil is over. the headlights did come. they broke through the fog. they shimmered with halos the whole way down the street.
the one that you love made it home, wrapped in white light.
precisely the prayer you had prayed.
have you waited lately? or ever? do you find your mind racing into dark corners? or do you have some secret serenity, some faith that all will work out, until proven otherwise? do you remember waiting as a young child? do you recall how sweet the embrace when the vigil is over?
by the way, thank you to those who partook of the impromptu prayer ring, mom, emb. and most of all to the guardian angels who got the boy home.
a triple big birthday to my favorite triplets, cate, charlie and matt. and to the mama and papa who teach all of us what it means to be extraordinary in the parent dept.
to my mama, who forever calls today her wedding day. now 53 years ago. and to gary and cecilia who call it the same, although theirs was a dozen or so.
finally, the lazy susan is restocked with a nod to october. give it a whirl.
and now, tell me your stories of waiting…..
glad he is home safe and sound through the fog.waiting you ask? What immediately comes to mind is ambulances. Someone is always waiting for them on the other end,and it’s not for a happy reason, be it the hospital or those waitingfrantically for it on the other end at their home. when 4 minutes feels like 4 hours. Reminder to us all, to pull over and say a prayerstraight away.Once you have been there you never forget.
My conundrum on waiting involves those little people (in my heart) who have grown into much bigger people (in my life) and the difficulty in letting them go into the world. When they are living at home, which is part of the year, I struggle with the “waiting for return” because they often leave to go out when I am dragging myself to bed….and because the night life of Chicago goes on to milkman hours…they return when I am close to waking up. It drives me to distraction when I wake up at 3 or 4 AM and they have not come home yet. Oh the dark thoughts that can be entertained at that hour of the morning are truly dreadful….yet I try hard to throw them out the window and go back to sleep. Sleep never settles in unless I hear the front door open and close and feet climb up the stairs and a bedroom door close. Now here is the puzzle, during the times my bigger people are living elsewhere, may it be Europe, another state, or even just two miles away…..well, I sleep just fine! I am sure my darlings are engaging in the same social activities, possibly more risky, and keeping the same ridiculous hours BUT it is not on my watch. So I rest much easier. Proximity is the foe of a restful and peaceful mind of a parent.
Golly. I have one thing to say. Farmer Palmer’s Wagon Ride by William Steig. The same tale told in a different way, from the perspective of the traveler.I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping my imagination under lock, key, and straitjacket in the past few years. (Okay I have more than one thing to say.) This is because my Mr. Parallel Life keeps crazy work hours, and has to travel not infrequently to other countries for oh, a week or two at a time. That traveling abroad thing does challenge my mind-control the most. But the time that really, truly sent me over the edge into a frenzy of outlandish imagining was not too long ago, when he was to meet with a student after a class he was teaching. He was hours late coming home. Hours. And as I lay in bed wondering if I should call the police, my mind had created a fully believable scenario in which this student–whom I knew to be faring poorly and unhappy about his grades–had killed my husband and dragged his body off somewhere convenient, then hopped on a plane and left the country. This is actually what I thought. I was planning on how I’d direct the police to the criminal, exactly what I’d say when I phoned, when Mr. Parallel himself called to apologize for his delay. “Him?” he asked when I suggested the vague outlines of my worries (of course I didn’t describe the whole crime scene; one doesn’t verbalize these things really); “oh, we only talked for about five minutes. There were lots of students waiting to talk and then I had to help one of the faculty who blah blah blah blah, blah blah, blah.” Well. The rapid descent from crazy fantasy land back onto the solid earth of reality left me feeling rather puzzled, exhausted. And after all it was one in the morning. I gave him a strident nagging lecture (what else is a wife to do?) never to do that again, and drifted off to a fitful sleep at last. I’m sure I ignored him on purpose when he finally got home, because that is the other side of the breathless, fervent, prayerful waiting upon the one we love. Sometimes it’s a little annoying to be held so captive to another’s actions, another’s fate. As much as it is relieving, solid, and as basic as breath itself to have such a one to be tethered to.Lamcal I have no idea how I’m going to navigate that distant point of parenting which involves older more or less grownup kids coming and going and keeping the hours I myself kept at that age. I suppose we move into that, and readiness for that, slowly, and it’s simply one thing I don’t need to worry about just now! Here’s to being at home all together with our dear ones, gathered around a table.