One Way Street

Josh and I spend much of our week downtown working at various coffee shops. I am usually writing or editing on my computer while Josh meets, consults and coaches. I love it down there. I love the energy I get just being surrounded by people. I’m not even really a people person either. I used to hate going downtown, until King street in
charleston South Carolina. If you have never been, add it to your list of places to see before you die. I absolutely adore the charm, the cobblestone streets, historic buildings, and energy of the thousands of tourists who crowd the sidewalks. Now, Denver is unlike Charleston, and I get that, but once I fell in love with Charleston and we frequented King street, I couldn’t help but long for that energy when we moved back to Denver.

Monday was a day that Josh and I were downtown working. Emma had come with us because she is a budding photographer and we needed some pictures added to our website. The girl has talent (go check out our website www.joshuatreeworldwide.com and you will see all the photos she took at the bottom of the page in the photo stream section) so we hired her to find shots of as many different walks of life as she could possibly find. Again, she did an amazing job. From there we went to a coffee shop while Josh consulted with a client, then headed back over to us. We continued working for a few more hours and then Emma and I headed on back home.

If you know Emma and I very well, you know that 90% of the time we are laughing. Laughing at each other, laughing at ourselves, laughing at nothing, just laughing. As we left the coffee shop it was no different. Emma is fluent in sarcasm so she was making snide remarks about everything from how I was walking with my bag, to how I put it in the car, to how I was drinking the last sip of my green tea. When she gets in goofy moods like that I feed her frenzy by doing really bizarre things so she can at least be laughing enough not to talk anymore! I had made a U-turn out of my parallel parking spot and was headed down the street to home as I was laughing at Emma laughing at me. I was not really paying attention. As I turned left on the side street I looked up to see that the street was pretty narrow and a car was headed directly at me. I stopped our goofiness and said to Emma “Is this a one-way street?” to which she replied “I don’t know! I just know that one of you is crazy” then points at me and says “and I choose YOU, mom!” I am now laughing so hard I can’t see straight. Luckily for me, a parking lot was directly to my right so I didn’t have a very awkward situation on my hands passing the car coming at me head on. I pulled into a spot and we laughed until we cried at the chaos of it all, at her witty remark and at my inattention to detail. I wondered if Josh was watching us from inside the coffee shop and the mere thought of that made it even more funny. I’m still laughing my a** off as I type this!

Being the analytic that I am, later I started to relate that incident to my life and to others. Honestly, it’s funny how many times I’ve been cruising down the road of life and realized that I was headed straight for danger. Sometimes, it has been my fault. Maybe I wasn’t watching the warning signs, or maybe I was focused on other things. Either way, more times than not, I have been rescued by a “parking lot.” Other times, it was some other driver on the road that veered off course and was headed for me. Funny thing was, after Emma and I calmed down enough that day to be able for me to move my car from the parking lot, she reminded me that all day I had incidents like this. Not that I was constantly going the wrong way on a one way, just little annoyances with my driving. As we were first headed to meet up with Josh, we were detoured from construction work that was going on. Then we finally met up with Josh and as we got to him, and climbed out of the car, he changed the location we were going to go to. Then, as we followed him down the road to our final destination, he was driving at a snails pace because he was on his cell phone and distracted. We finally made it downtown and our luck was finally looking up when we found a parking meter.....uh, it just happened to be way further from our meeting place than we realized. Emma was right, all day I had my patience and luck pushed where driving was concerned. I wasn’t crying or beat down or burdened by it, I was actually unaffected because we still made it to everywhere we were headed.

This past year, I have had my patience and luck pushed with life in general. Many times, like Emma and I experienced, I have been able to laugh at my circumstances, be thankful for what could have been tragic, but wasn’t, and acknowledge that being crazy is something I can embrace. The road in life is sometimes marked with detours, I am pretty sure I’m on one right now. The great thing about a detour is that it’s sole purpose is to repair the old road and get you back on track to your destination. I believe that is what is happening now. A detour. Repairing our old path, but still headed in the right direction to our final destination. Will we hit pot holes? I’m sure. Will one of us be moving so slow the other gets impatient? Of course. Will Josh or I or the kids start heading down the road the wrong way? possibly, but seven other people are here to point their fingers in your face, call you crazy and show you to the closest parking lot.

I don’t think that we can predict what will happen in our future fully. I don’t think I can control the other drivers on the road. I just know that as long as I am paying attention to reaching my final destination, with Josh and the kids by my side, I can handle the little annoyances of my journey and be grateful I am always headed the right direction.