The following was lifted from Room for More:
~~~
So, Saturday night, about 7pm, Bobbi was discharged from the hospital
and got to come home. That began a truly miserable night, culminating
in a 4:30am 911 call when we'd exhausted our options for pain
management, and her anxiety over the pain (not helped by the narcotics)
causing the pain to escalate even further. Poor girl. Matt followed the
ambulance down to the hospital in our little Jetta (easier to park!) and
spent a few hours there not sleeping while they got things calmed down a
bit, and swapped out one of her meds to give her something more
effective at relaxing her muscles. Then they wanted to send her back
home. (Yikes!!) So Matt had to drive back - so nice that we're so close!
- and swap out for Big Blue because she doesn't fit in the Jetta with
her casts. Honestly, we'd been thinking with the state she was in that
she would be readmitted and he would not be bringing her back home that
same morning, which is why he took the Jetta in the first place. He
parked the Jetta way up on the driveway next to our trailer to give
plenty of room to navigate Big Blue on the return trip, came in, got
some breakfast, gathered a few things, and about 45 minutes later was
back out the door to bring her back home.
I realized
that we were going to need some extra hands during the day, because
caring for her was a full-time-and-then-some job for both me and Matt
during the night. We were both terribly fatigued, and knew we had a day
full ahead of us. I made two unsuccessful phone calls while staring out
the front window. Then I saw the Jetta heading down the driveway, and I
mindlessly wondered where Matt was going...and then remembered...Matt
had
already gone!...the Jetta was leaving the premises of its own
accord!!!! Phone in hand, I dialed 911 for the second time that morning
(is that what you're supposed to do for runaway cars? I don't know.)
Somehow, the car made it down our curving driveway, over the low garden
wall at the bottom, across the street, through the ditch, across the
west-bound highway lane, into the central ditch where it settled down
and there it sat.
 |
| You have to zoom in, but it's there if you look. |
Um. This is not good. The woman I spoke with from the
highway patrol was delightfully kind, and said not to worry at all
since it was out of both drive lanes. I called our neighbor and she took
on the task of getting it towed out of the ditch. Then I emailed our
pastor. "We need help..." And help came in the form of Faith and her mom
(who is in our small group bible study).
It's kind of a
scary thing to realize that you are so sleep deprived that you are
(apparently) missing really important things like making sure your car
is properly secured before leaving it, but the story became even more
curious when we learned from the man who towed it out for us that
it was in gear and the parking brake was engaged
when he checked it out before towing it out. It started for him, too,
amazingly, as he turned it a bit to get a better angle for the tow.
What in the world???
I'm
only being slightly facetious when I say that the only option I can
think of is that it was the hand of God that pushed that car down the
driveway.
Because, apparently, we needed
just
exactly that much more stress layered onto that Sunday. I remember
thinking at the moment as I was thanking God that my car was running
away down the driveway that there must really be some truly marvelous
shaping and forming that is going on. The precision with which my
Surgeon is breaking and cutting and re-shaping is incredible.
I
went out the next day to survey the damage done to my garden. I really,
really enjoy my gardens (even to the point that I keep a crazy little
blog that only I have the address for where I post photos of what's
blooming, show me and the kids working in it, tell stories about plants
that have come with special memories of friends and family, and talk
about the progress, or lack thereof, of Matt's and my vision for the
yard. It's fun having almost an acre to play with, and all of the raw
material from his grandma's amazing perennial gardens). The garden at
the bottom of the driveway is a newer one, and the limestone wall along
our edge of it is still being constructed at the top edge. Just not this
summer. Nothing at all happened in the gardens this summer, and only a
little bit last year. When my parents' friend Carrie spent a week with
us in June, one thing that really mattered to have her help with was
mulching that garden around a few new plants our neighbor split off and
shared with me so that I had one. nice. tidy. place that gives the
impression that the home and yard is being cared for. It looked really
nice all summer. To have that one bit of garden-sanity that we have this
year get run over by my own car was not missed by me.
And
yet, beautifully, when I went out the next day to inspect the damage as
I checked the mail, (Oops. Columbus Day. No mail.) this is what I saw:
Since
it's hard to see, here's a photo-shopped version to help you see the
track that the tire made as it went through the garden.
It
crushed one begonia (an annual - not a big deal in October), but ran
right in between the others and my wild geraniums. It missed the
daylilies, and one sedum was hit, but only lost a few branches. It will
come back just fine in the spring.
The
only real loss out of the whole thing was my favorite piece of
limestone that I had placed carefully to work as a seat while we wait
for buses at the bottom of the driveway.
Now that's the precision work of an extremely talented surgeon, if you ask me.
For
some reason, the whole thing with the car has served to be a hugely
tangible reminder that not a single thing that happens during this
extremely strenuous time is happening by accident. It is all designed
just as precisely as the way that car ran through my one decent looking
garden.
