Crying in the car

Or, really there isn’t a right place to begin writing again, is there?

I’ve been doing fine, I suppose. There have been urges to do something BIG! and LIFE! AFFIRMING! but it seems in the movies that always involves heights, and I’m scared of those so instead I decided to go with doing the small and life sustaining things like take the kids to school and grocery stop.

So today I’m doing just that and on the way home the kids all fall asleep in the back of the car and I decided to take the long way home so I wouldn’t have to wake them. For once, it’s quiet and there’s not a whole lot of traffic on these back roads and it’s too easy to think. And Fast Car by Tracy Chapman comes on the radio and all of a sudden I can’t stop crying.

Crying while driving is always a tricky thing. You can’t really give in to it fully or you’ll really have something to cry about, yet you can’t do too much about it, either. You just sort of have to let it all flow out while establishing a blinking pattern that will leave you with near full visibility and hope your nose doesn’t get into the act, too, because the tissues always go missing out of the center console.

I considered going to the Starbucks drive through and getting something nice to drink but I wasn’t sure if crying girl ordering a grande caramel macchiato was some sort of horrible cliche or noteworthy enough that they’d all talk about it and remember me when I came back. Or for that matter, which would be a bigger blow to my self esteem. So I just drove until John Tesh started talking and I could distract myself with how much I dislike his radio show yet have never bothered to change the channel.

Later that afternoon, I was driving again and a woman driving a car approaching me was crying in her car. She looked angry, like she’d been in an argument and stormed off  without considering where it was that she wanted to go. I hope that everything works out for her.

I guess if I tried hard enough I could squeeze out some meaning or lesson from this experience and make this a proper sort of blog post but really I think what I wanted to say was hey, this is where I am, more or less okay but sometimes I cry while driving.

PS thanks to everyone that left nice comments, emailed and called, it’s been very appreciated.