We started this journey in sunny Atlanta. It was chilly and cold, but no inclemency. We trekked the 10 hours in pre-holiday traffic, taking care to avoid accidents, getting stuck behind rubberneckers.
Rubberneckers really suck carpet tacks. I don’t get it. Curiosity fueled traffic jams–I mean WTF? I avert my eyes because I don’t want to see hurt, blood, or mangled cars. Holiday dreams dashed to bits. I especially hate bloody limbs.
But we made it to Virginia and the warmth, love and safety of my parent’s beautiful Federal style home built by a Civil War general for his four daughters back in 1886. We broke some bread, some lobsters, and a crystal goblet. We happily made a huge mess of one previously well-appointed home. Isn’t that the definition of family? Love and clueless destruction?
And then it came time to head further north to Kate’s family’s equally beautiful antebellum/federal brick home in Pennsylvania.
This leg of the journey encompassed driving through sleet, freezing rain, and driving snow. The secondaries were brutal white-outs but even the heavily-travelled interstate was a treacherous nightmare. Every couple of miles were piled-up vehicles. Four wheel drive vehicles seemed to be the main culprits and they were upside down. These foolish tools were recklessly, cockily tearing up the blacktop and then careening off into medians or into ditches. And then getting stuck in the wet, deep slush. Sometimes, they took out others driving more cautiously. You’d see some sedans and then the reckless jack wad that caused the wreck.
We were toddling along at warp speed of 35. But I didn’t feel safe with the unevolved skidding past in their big boy toys. It only takes one Darwin Award with a Jackass-like stunt to plow into us and send the grinding metal of vehicles, filled with delicate human flesh, careening into the weeds.
Kate was white-knuckled and hunched forward. I was leaning forward taking iPhone captures of the road to document whether conditions were worsening.
That way when someone extricated the phone from my cold, dead snow-encrusted hand, they would see the documentation of my visual concern: the slush freezing from screen to screen; the traffic thickening; the sleet accumulating on the windshield; the blacktop disappearing. They could make sense of what happened when Cro-Magnon-Neck-Monsieur-Jackturd knocked us from the road.
Of course I went through this entire scenario in my head.
After some drama and every parents’ input, we bailed on the trip and got a hotel room. The next day, we made it to the family homestead in PA.
In one intact piece. No insurance claim.
And a whole bunch of stuff happened in the interim.
Let’s say that families have their dynamics. And oftentimes, those dynamics are dysfunctional. Don’t all families put the “fun” in dysfunction?
There is always a big pile of history, of past mistakes, patterns that are deeply esconced. Members that bring a big ball of issues into a room. And usually, there is some interaction that is the fly in the ointment.
My Dad and I used to be the flies in the ointment. We butted heads, both of us too much alike. Eventually, my mom intervened and cried, “ENOUGH!” Get along you two! Or else!” She’s a hot-headed (yet easy-going, kind, and generous) little Italian woman.
So I heeded her demand. I found a brilliant counselor and told her of my weird dysfunctional dance with my Dad. She showed me the cycle and my guilt in it (and here I thought I was entirely innocent beforehand!) I figured out how to remove the lynchpin of the problem and voila! things have been good ever since. It was the simplest, most complex thing you can imagine.
I cared deeply about improving that relationship for all of the players and figured out how to make it work.
So, we left this morning in a blizzard again for my parent’s house. And I started thinking about safety and how there have been many times when I haven’t felt safe socially. Or welcomed. Or how a tight knit group won’t let you in. That happened to me when Walker was in a co-ed preschool and the parents wouldn’t talk to us. And how it didn’t feel safe. We left, of course. Found another school where we fit in, where we were a part of the larger whole.
Because when you don’t feel safe, you remove yourself from that situation. Fight or flight. Fleeing is always more freeing. Fighting leaves scars and bruises. Teeth marks. Jello stains. (That’s just how I fight.)
And we were on the road, in another white-out. In a blizzard where they called for 3-6″. Me, thanking the stars that I’m a Southern girl, all dug down in the red Georgia clay, in the hot searing sun. Even if its cold there now, we don’t have this skiddy, dangerous bullshit on the roads.
And the roads are not the worst ever, even though they aren’t great. But I’m breathing deeply. I feel safe again. I’m with Kate and Walker and we are heading Southbound. We passed the Mason Dixon.
And finally, we were back to my parent’s house for the night.
And I’m thinking about how safety, when it comes down to it, is all relative.
