There but for the grace of God.

Here is what happens:

You've spent the week in New York, in town for business. You have been staying on the Upper West Side, a neighborhood you chose because you wanted to explore on your down-time, to try it on, to wander.  Thursday is the day you drive home, back to Boston, and so instead of heading into the office, you work from the UWS that morning, camped out at the kitchen table set up in the AirBnB you rented for the week.  Just before lunch, you will meet a woman you'd only just met, the wife of a co-worker, who lives nearby and over dinner the night before offered her phone number, a friendly exchange and invitation to connect which you gratefully accept.  You will meet her and her sweet four month old baby for a walk through Central Park, iced coffees in hand, talking about anything and everything, feeling like you have known this person for forever.  You will wander into the Met, and, thanks to her annual membership, see the newest annual Costume Institute exhibit. 

Eventually the two of you will part ways at the bottom of the Met steps, as you are off to an appointment downtown.  You will think, as you sit in the cab, riding through midtown, how many more things you wanted to discuss with her, how many other thoughts and ideas have popped into your head to share after just saying goodbye.  As your cab winds through traffic you will take a breath, thinking how nice it feels to connect with someone, how lucky you are to have known this feeling of meeting a sister of your soul, someone who just gets it, several times in this life.

Appointment finished, quick bite to eat procured, en route on the subway back uptown, you will carry this day and the sudden lightness you feel like the gift that it is.  There has been a lot occupying your brain as of late - worry and fear and anxiety and all the rest of it and this gentle, brief reprieve feels like enough to keep you going, enough to remind you to forge ahead.

You will check the time and realize with a start that you need to get on the road if there is any hope of getting ahead of rush hour traffic.  Jeep collected from the parking garage, loaded with the past week's adventures between PA, NJ, and NY, you will set off - making your way to the West Side Highway, focused on directions, thinking about the similarities and differences between navigating Boston and New York traffic just before 5pm on a Thursday before a long holiday weekend.

About twenty miles out of the city, the traffic will begin to thin.  Most travelers are getting on 95; you are grateful you have an alternative route, a different highway that will take you north.  You will check your GPS one last time, knowing the rest of the route by heart, you have no need for its directing.  You are just settling into the rhythm of the road, having veered off to the left as the two highways split, following the one toward Brewster that will eventually take you home.  The road will curve slightly and so you will turn the wheel slightly; a movement so habitual you're not really thinking about it, until you notice with a start that your car is not turning.  And then, before you can process or figure out what might even be wrong; your car, going at 65 miles per hour, will shoot across the right hand lane (all your brain will be able to think is - shit shit shit, other cars, other cars) and then you will barrel into an embankment full of soft dirt and high grass, an area neglected between the parkway and an exit.  (Later, as you process all of these events, you will realize how extraordinarily lucky you were that there was a soft place to land; it could have just as easily been a concrete barrier or metal guardrail or oncoming traffic or people or trees.)  You will slam on the brakes, mentally screaming, and suddenly, in what likely took no more than twenty seconds, you will find yourself stuck on the side of the road, deep in this embankment, wondering what just happened and how you landed where you did.

Your mind will be blank. It is as if your brain has split into two parts - one of which completely understands the plain fact that you are now roadside, stuck in dirt, and suddenly nothing is unfolding as planned and the other part is still on the highway, still driving north and fiddling with the radio, settling on NPR, unable to process how you got here so quickly.  It is only later, as you sit waiting for a tow truck, that the two parts of your mind begin to come back together with the realization that you just miraculously escaped what could have been a very, very terrible and horrific accident (crumpled cars, spin-outs, serious injury to yourself or others, flipped vehicles, death).  But in the present moment you will feel lost, your mind wiped clean, no idea what to do.  There will be a quite echo in the back of your brain that thinks police? no, there's no accident.  911?  no, I'm fine.  AAA? Yes, I guess so, but how did I get here? And so you will call your Mom.  (Also later, you will be grateful for her calm and level-headed thinking, telling you to call AAA, to get yourself towed to a Jeep dealership, for her googling location details while you make the necessary calls.)

Given semantics of highways and parkways and county lines it is quite some time before a tow truck will arrive.  Turns out you are in a bit of a no-mans land, the quest to find you made even more challenging given the height of the weeds and grass you have landed in, making it rather impossible for highway safety to even see your Jeep until they have already passed it.  Afraid to get out of your car, you will sit in bewilderment, taking stock of how you are here, without a scratch.  A car will eventually pull over ahead, you will know it is a Samaritan coming to check on you and you will be at once grateful (no one else has stopped) and fearful (horrible stories of creeps preying on a woman with car trouble).  You will lock your doors and watch him approach, your cell phone in hand, ready.  You will roll down your window only part-way and speak with him, you will appreciate that he makes no moves to come closer to the car, he does not attempt to lean in.  You will take note of his FDNY shirt, you will believe he is very kind.  Once you have assured him you have a phone, you have made the necessary calls and are okay, he will leave with a smile and a wave.  You will whisper yet another grateful prayer.

Finally as the sun is setting, a tow truck driver - a hero - will arrive.  You will climb into the cab of the truck, watching from the back window as he loads your beloved old Jeep onto the flatbed.  You will worry something may be horribly wrong with your car - she is old, perhaps she is tired, but she has never failed you before, even in circumstances where it was probably within her right to fail you.  As your tow truck driver climbs back into the cab he will tell you that your tire rod snapped off, that's why you lost control of steering. He will assure you that there was nothing you could have done, that as soon as they go the vehicle has a mind of its own.  The two of you will marvel together how lucky, how fortunate you are to be sitting in the cab next to him, not on your way to a hospital, or, worse - the worse hanging between the two of you for the length of the drive.  You will watch your Jeep through the rear view mirror as the driver takes you to the dealership/service department, praying all the while.

You will spend the night in White Plains, NY at a Crowne Plaza hotel only a five minute walk from where your Jeep is dropped; the service department will look at her first thing in the morning when they open, they will share their diagnosis then. You worry it will be bad news, but you put the worry on a shelf - there is nothing you can do about it now anyway.  Over the phone you will marvel to both your parents and your aunt how blessed you are on a multitude of levels given the recent turn of events.  You were only a few miles from a Jeep dealership, there is a clean and safe hotel just down the road, there is a spot for dinner, you will witness blessing after sweet blessing unfolding in a scary and worrisome situation.

About a month ago, you participated in an all day yoga-thon, raising money for Boston Children's Hospital.  During the lunch break on this day, you wandered among a few stalls that had been set up by the field where 1,008 yogis were practicing.  There were food trucks and yoga friendly vendors, most selling yoga mats and props, gear.  One woman was selling jewelry and you paused to admire her trinkets.  Displayed among her Mala Beads was a delicate gold necklace, the word grateful engraved on a gold plate.  In a year that has taught you a lot about gratitude, as you aspire to remain grateful, you bought it in an instant.  You have worn it almost every day since.

On Thursday night, you will sit at the hotel restaurant, sipping a glass of wine and eating a beet salad, marveling to yourself that you are still here, breathing, eating, living.  You could be gone, it could all be over, just like that.  An instant.  All of it, gone, poof.  You will breathe in prayer after prayer, you will lift your eyes up to the hotel ceiling blinking the words thank you over and over again. And later, as you climb into your hotel bed, you will whisper up 1,000 prayers of gratitude, you will clasp your necklace between your fingers, silently repeating the word as you drift off to sleep: grateful, grateful, grateful.