Only One Explanation

I felt my wheels twitch as they moved off from the damp pavement to a slushy sheet of snow at 60 mph. Before my mind could tell my hands what to do, they had turned the wheel sharply in an attempt to correct my angling toward the big utility van I was passing.

***

The roads had been pretty decent up until then. Just as I had left Berrien Springs at 2:30 a.m., the snow had tried to smother out my optimism for the seventeen hours ahead of me, but I had passed through the pocket and by the time I was on I-90, heading impatiently toward Vermont, the road was dry in places, wet in others. I was out of Michigan. Through Indiana. Ohio's end was in sight with the snow speckled signs telling me I was 50 miles from Erie, Pennsylvania.

The winds had been gusting around me already for five hours, occasionally bearing snowflakes, and in Ohio, the snowflakes had gotten thicker. I wasn't too worried though. I was heading home.

***

My little Geo Metro, Chuck, had a mind of his own when my hands set him free like that--as if he was suddenly getting me back for the times I've squished four people into his two-seated smallness and stalled him as my left-foot got accustomed to his finicky clutch and forgot to cover his ragtop before it snowed. He was skating all over the road like a whirligig beetle.

And then I saw myself headed straight for the side of the utility van. I remember thinking it wasn't going to be good. I remembering wondering if it would hurt when Chuck's chin and nose would crumple up in front of me and then munch me up too.

And then we hit, Chuck ramming his front into the flank of the white van. My computer on the seat next to me flew into the dash. Chuck was still going, spinning, heading back west on I-90 east, then turning again, completing his antics and wobbly 360 as he knocked himself out with a smash against the guardrail.

***

Before leaving at 2:30, I had knelt down on the brown carpet of my apartment. Usually I'll close my eyes for a few seconds as I sit behind the wheel in preparation for a journey, the words running around quietly in my head. But yesterday morning I needed something more. I needed to hear that prayer be real.

And it was. In the yet-dark hours as I headed out and the stars streaked across the sky. As I sat wedged against the guardrail and found that I was alive and that nothing hurt. And when I looked and found that even the bulb of my broken taillight would continue to glow out behind me--along with the warmth of gratitude within me--for the remaining twelve hours, for the last of the lingering journey, Home.