Urgent

There is an urgency for spring all around me. Tips of every branch and stem swell with buds anxious to burst into bloom. My backyard is dotted with with white blossoms, which couldn't wait and spilled into sunshine on a falsely warm day. I don't know if the others can hold back until this hesitation which takes the air from 70 degrees to 40 degrees makes up its atmospheric mind. Today is yet another gray, chilly day. Cold rain is splattering on the patio. A stiff breeze bobs those buds heavily up and down, and the pines whisper, "Not yet, not yet."

Off the Road

This is not my story. A friend of mine recently had a stroke while driving her car in Polk County, where I used to live. She was on this narrow, twisty, mountain road when suddenly her vision dissolved into swirls of colors and no ability at all to see objects in front of and around her.  Pretty darn scary, huh. This road is not like those here at the beach. There was no question of rolling off onto the shoulder - there it would have meant a steep drop-off. She did the only thing she could. She stopped the car where she was, rolled down the window, and begin to yell for help.

Some time passed. Some people passed her briskly. Some blew their horns at her and passed. Some blew horns; yelled at her; and passed. And one fellow stopped, got out of his car, and started yelling and cussing at her.

Her good Samaritan, as she calls him, was passing in the opposite direction, saw the man yelling at her, turned around and came back. He got her car off the road from the passenger side; called 911; and was there when she passed out and until the ambulance came.

Now is the time when we can all lament the lack of civility in the world and "what are things coming to?" I found myself thinking about what am I coming to?

Since I heard this story, I have been thinking of all the times I have felt irritated, angry, and revengeful towards other people on the road. It pretty much boils down to, "NO ONE has the right to impede my progress, and if they do, they are stupid SOBs who better get out of the way, or else!"

I admit it. I have had those feelings roll over me for offenses that in the whole wide world, really mattered very little.

I'm terrified that I might have been one of the people to blow the horn; snort with indignation; and get the heck around her.

Sometimes, I take a deep breath. Sometimes I think about the person in the other car and what he/she might be going through. Sometimes I am patient. Sometimes I just decide not to be an angry person.

But on that day on that road? I just don't know, but I will be taking this story with me when I go driving from now on.

We are all in it together, yes we are.