The Crow Knew

On Sunday, April 22, we made what was supposed to be a drive south that would take about three and a half hours. We were headed to Sugarloaf Key, to have lunch with my (Trish) agent, Al Zuckerman, who also represents Rob for books that we write together, and his wife. He has a winter home in the keys and we try to get down there during the winter months to see him.

We left the house around 8:30 and took the dogs over to a neighbor’s place for the day, then drove to the closest turnpike entrance. In recent months, the turnpike here in South Florida has been under constant construction and unless you drive it frequently, which we don’t, it’s easy to lose track of what’s being done. In the past, most of the turnpike entrances in our area  featured one place to get on and then shortly after the toll booth, the road split into northbound traffic and southbound traffic. Well, not anymore.

As we got on the turnpike, we suddenly realized the road no longer split. We were headed north and our only option was to get off at the next exit and then get on the southbound exit headed for the keys. So a few miles north,  we got off and realized this exit, too, no longer featured the split highway. We were stuck headed north.

Okay, next exit, Rob says. By now, it’s 9 AM and we’re still not headed south. We get off  and realize there’s no southbound entrance here, either. So we head west for several miles and take the first intersection headed south. A few miles later, we finally find a turnpike entrance that will take us south.

Minutes afterward, I’m trying to bring up something on my iPad, not paying attention to anything in front of us,  and Rob starts laughing. “Crow the trickster has a message for us.”

“What crow?”

“The one that just swooped across the road in front of us, then made an abrupt U-turn.”

“C’mon, really?”

“I swear.”

So I’m thinking about the odds of crow the trickster reflecting our maneuvers just minutes after we finally had found a turnpike entrance south. Pretty cool.

Due to tourist traffic and our own snafus, we finally made the turnoff for Al’s neighborhood at 1:08 and pulled into the drive about three minutes later, at 1:11, more than five hours after we’d left home, more than half an hour late for lunch, and at, well, that time. Despite the delay and the sobering news about the state of publishing these days, the company was great, the lunch delicious. I realized Al had been my agent for  18 years,  since Megan was just four years old.  Tempus fugit, as my mother used to say. Time flies.

On the trip back, we were tired and stopped frequently for restrooms, food, Cuban coffee, and pictures. When we finally exited the turnpike at 7:45 that evening, Rob said,  “Do you realize that the crow this morning not only reflected our immediate U-turn, but the fact that we’ve made a huge U-turn today? We drove more than 200 miles for lunch, then made a U-turn and came home.”