Oh sh**t! I’d turned the wrong way on a one-way street! “I’m so sorry!” I mouthed to the drivers of the two cars coming toward me as I drove in the wrong direction down Hudson Avenue. The drivers flashed lights and cursed me through closed windows.
How did I miss the thin grey “Right Turn Only” sign over the exit when I pulled out of the parking garage in my husband, Hank’s, office building? Oh, I know…I was in a hurry.
It’s the holidays. Isn’t everyone in a hurry?
I pulled to the curb and waited. Once they passed, I hugged the curb and crept 800 ft. to the corner of Colorado Blvd.
Phew, I sighed until the jarring lights from a motorcycle cop flashed in my rearview mirror.
“Do you know what you just did?” the officer asked.
“Yes, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see the sign, and…”
“When was your last ticket?” he interrupted me
“Last March.”
“What were you doing?” His manner was gruff, scolding.
“I was going 47mph in a 35mph zone, Officer.”
“Oh, so you were speeding.”
He took my license. “I’m going to go check your record.”
The minutes seemed like hours as I waited.
Sauntering back to my car, he peered at me through wraparound dark glasses. “Ok, I’m going to let you off with a warning. You actually have a good driving record.”
“I did traffic school,” I offered.
“If you get stopped again, this warning will be on your record and you’ll get a citation. Got that?” He handed the paper to me and leaned down, all brown mustache and sunglasses. “So, put this on your refrigerator to remind yourself to slow down.”
_________________
Apparently, I’d ignored a similar message from the week before…
I’d been waiting in line at the bank as the only teller open explained the Bank’s app to an older customer. The ATM outside was “getting serviced” so I had no choice but to wait. As each minute passed, the teller’s voice, loud behind the plexiglass partition, grated on me. The customer, oblivious to my waiting in line shifted her feet, clad in sensible shoes. Her iphone was in a wallet case that continuously flipped back over blocking the screen as she shifted her stance. “Can you show me that again?”
I was the only customer in line and could hear the Private Banking guy at the desk nearby is on the phone with his wife, muttering over which cut of meat to get on a Cosco run. Meanwhile, I had a long list of things to do. Yet, here I was.
After ten minutes, it was finally my turn. I typed in the code for my ATM card, the teller asked, “So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“Rushing to make up the time having to wait in this line for you to explain the app.”
Oh my god, did I just say that?
She smiled, handing me my receipt. “Happy Holiday!”
Later at the hairdresser, I tried to justify my rude remark.
“Don’t you hate it when strangers ask questions when you just want to get in and out of a grocery store or bank?” I asked Alison my hairdresser, as she dabbed blonde into my grey roots. “I mean, I’m not there for socializing. I’m there to make a transaction.”
She laughed. “Heather, you’re always in a hurry.”
The woman in the chair next to me, her hair in foils, piped in: “To go where?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Places. Errands. Stuff… ask, Alison,” I added, “I leave here with wet hair all the time. No patience for the blow dry, especially during the holidays.”
While my hair was “processing,” the woman with the foils turned to me. “Slow down. What’s the rush? Enjoy the moment. Talk to the teller. Hell, she’s behind plexiglass all day.”
“You’re probably right,” I sighed.
“And, the cashier at Trader Joe’s? If they want to ask what you’re making with the brussels sprouts, tell them.”
“How did you know?” I laughed.
“I know your type. Rush. Rush. But you can choose to do it differently. Slow down, girl.”
“It’s the holidays. I’m not always like this.”
Alison lowered the brush she was using to add the color to meet my eyes in the mirror. I acquiesced. “Ok, ok, maybe I am.”
We all laughed, but I couldn’t get the woman’s words out of my head, slow down.
That was until the next day and the next when, right back at it, I was rushing around as if these last two weeks before Christmas were a sprint to the finish. The warning signs to slow my roll were everywhere, but I couldn’t seem to stop.
Especially this year. Two weeks before Christmas, Hank was scheduled for surgery on his right foot – his driving foot. Early on, I’d offered to drive him where he needed to go. “It’s no bother.”
But that was before I realized how many places he goes and how damn punctual he was going to be. “Heath, we need to leave in ten minutes.”
“Something tells me, this isn’t so fun for you anymore,” he said after the fourth day.
“What makes you think that?” I snapped back, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
It was all getting to me, as it does every year. Are you ready for Christmas? Who is ever “ready?” I always think I haven’t done enough for my family and friends.
Or, was I aspiring to be that annoying person who says they haven’t done a thing to prepare for the holiday on December 15th, yet managed to pull off the best gifts, the most delicious meals, in a home that looked like an ad for the Holiday Edition of Southern Living, with seemingly no effort.
“There you go, Heather,” my sister, April said. “Just like Mom used to, you’re out buying extra presents, thinking you haven’t done enough. And, you’ll have plenty of side dishes. Relax! People don’t really even care.”
“I care!”
Perhaps unhappy Christmases as a child made me like this, trying desperately to create holiday perfection amid a family that was unravelling, my father preparing to disown my sister and me. That’s why I care if the tree was perfect, fretted if the wreath was too small for the courtyard door. If only I could do it all right, maybe he wouldn’t leave.
And here I go again: Oh no! There’s a light bulb out on the roof line. Go get the ladder!
“Did you get the Christmas tree, yet, Mom?” My oldest used to tease when I got uptight, seeing through my fragile façade that I could make everything just so.
______________________
After the officer left me, I put my warning on the passenger seat and dashed to drop a gift at my friend Ann’s home before heading to pick up my neighbor, to take her for a second biopsy on her breast after an MRI had found two more suspicious lumps.
Ann was out front when I dropped her gift. We talked for a moment, but I was in a rush. “I’ll call you from the car.”
I was driving Hank’s car and my phone did not connect to the Bluetooth but that didn’t stop me chatting away. I held my phone and kept an eye out, then put it on speaker, but too late. Again, lights from a police motorcycle flashed in my rearview mirror. “I’ve got to go, Ann. A policeman is stopping me.” I hadn’t even told her about the warning I’d received twelve minutes earlier. OMG, please don’t let it be the same officer!
This time it was an older officer with aviator glasses who approached. “I think you know why I’m stopping you,” he said.
I looked down at my phone. “Yes, Officer.”
“You don’t have Bluetooth in this car?”
“My phone didn’t connect. It’s my husband’s car and…you see, Officer, I’m rushing to get my friend to take her for a biopsy. I know I shouldn’t have been on the handset. I’m sorry.”
“This your current address?” he asked after I handed him my license, slowly covering the warning with my handbag.
The rain that had been threatening earlier began to pour. He was back to me in no time handing me a sopping but familiar piece of paper. “I’m going to give you a warning. Please, slow down and be careful out there.” his demeanor was kind and I felt a little guilty hiding the first warning. But only a little.
Minutes later, I picked up my neighbor for her appointment. “You sure you want me to take you?” I said. “I just got two traffic warnings within twelve minutes!”
She laughed. “I’d say that’s good luck, Heather. That first warning must’ve not been in the system yet. Let’s go!”
Once in the waiting room at the Breast Center, she pointed out that all the televisions in the waiting rooms for cancer patients seemed to play the Hallmark Channel fulltime. “So funny, isn’t it? A little fantasy as we await the challenges we face.”
She was nervous, so when she admired my boots I distracted her by insisting she shop on her phone to find a pair. I looked over at her scrolling away and that’s when it hit me. Her incredible resilience and humor since they’d found the first tumor a week ago. “Yesterday was rough,” she’d told me then, “it’s the unknown. Still, I’m hanging in there,” she’d said, giving a laugh. “What choice do I have!”
It was three days before Christmas. Two tangible warnings were in the side pocket of my husband’s car, but being here with my friend finally stopped me in my tracks.
I’d been wrapped up getting ready for Christmas, lost in my own selfish desire for holiday perfection, while my dear friend was dealing with real life. She handed me her phone. “Are these the ones?”
“No, mine only have one buckle. Let’s keep looking.”
I’d been in her home the other day as our three-year-old granddaughters played with the train around her tree. She was finding so much joy showing the little one’s how it moved, where it went around the tree. Not a sign of what she was going through inside. She made time to actually feel and enjoy the girl’s glee as the train chugged on, while I was ready to chug into the next item on my To-Do List. I told my granddaughter we needed to leave soon. Did we?
Was that the lesson I was failing to heed, as if two formal warnings in the space of twelve minutes weren’t enough? I thought of the woman at the hairdresser telling me to slow down. I felt shame remembering how much I complained about driving Hank around. April had pulled me up short. “Spoil him a little, Heath,” she’d said. “God knows he does enough for you.”
And now was my friend here, so brave. My poor husband was still limping around. Where had I been except caught up in my own self-image and head?
“Are these it?” she said, interrupting my thoughts.
“They are!” I leaned to check her phone. “Buy them, quick looks like they’re sold out in most sizes.”
A nurse called my friend’s name. “You need me to come with you?” I asked.
She slipped her phone in her handbag and looked back at me. “I kind of do.”
Very funny! The 12 Minutes of Christmas!