Every Day Magic

Over Valentine’s Day weekend, Megan came home to attend the wedding of a former college roommate. On Saturday, she headed up to Jupiter with another friend to see some sea tortoises, so I loaded Nika and Noah into my car for some time at the dog park. There was some sort of festival going on.

But as I reached the end of our neighborhood, Megan’s car turned in and we both stopped. “I forgot Chelsea’s cupcakes,” she said. Chelsea had asked Megan to pick up some Valentine’s Day cupcakes and they were still in a box in our fridge. “Is the house unlocked?”

“Nope,” I replied. “I’ll follow you back.”

I did a sloppy u-turn that took me over the front lawn of the house on the corner and I suddenly got stuck. Really stuck! We’ve had an unseasonal amount of rain for January and February and the ground was so saturated that every time I gunned the accelerator, the front tires of my Mazda 3 just kept digging in deeper and deeper. Mud flew everywhere. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos, but the picture above was what my front tires looked like, only they were sunk deeper than that one.

By this time, Megan was at our house and I called her and told her what had happened. She appeared about 30 seconds later and we tried to push the car back out of the mud. Nope. Didn’t work. A couple of young guys from the neighborhood had seen our dilemma and hurried over and tried to push us back. Nope.

By now, less than five minutes after the car had gotten stuck, a lawn service truck was coming out of the neighborhood across the street. The driver saw us, and quickly parked, and three Mexicans hurried across the street to help. Equestrians in golf carts wandered past and a couple of them stopped and offered to help. But it was obvious a golf cart wasn’t going to pull the car out!

The three Mexican guys pushed and pushed to no avail and they finally connected a chain to the underside of the car. I put the Mazda into neutral and their truck finally pulled my Mazda out of the muck. I drove home to pick up the dogs but the mud was so thick on my car I had to hose it down first and kept thinking OK, this is important, like an image from a dream. What’s it mean?

This incident is the kind that happens in the magic of every day life, where the universe speaks to us constantly. When we don’t hear the message, then the message becomes more literal and visceral – like getting stuck!- until we are forced to pay attention.

So what I took away from this experience is that even if I’m stuck – in a book, career, family, relationships, finances, whatever it is – help isn’t just on the way, it’s quick! And the help comes through strangers.

What I don’t know right now is the specific nature of the muck in which I got stuck. I suspect it’s my novel. We’ll see.