Drive

I rolled down the windows to feel the sunshine and wind as I drove around town yesterday. Yes, there was slowly melting snow on the ground and ice in the shady turning lanes. What’s your point?

Every once in a while when it rains that cool kind of rain – you know, big droplets, straight downward and the sun is still shining – I roll down the window to feel the rain on my hand as I drive. (I can never own a car with a nice, new interior. It would only be ruined.) This is probably strange, made stranger still by the fact that my driver’s side window now requires that I push it up while simultaneously pressing the button in order for it to close completely.

I love driving with the windows down. Yesterday, wrapped in scarf in jacket, it was particularly nice to breathe fresh air and feel the coldness on my skin. To be out of the house for the fourth day in a row – I feel a little like I’m returning, slowly, back into society – after being detained in doors for as many days, imprisoned by a steep, icy driveway.

Life and 2011 seems to have been put on hold, first by the holiday, and then by an unusual act of nature – and our respectful, unprepared, patience of it. I feel like this pause has made life seem unreal. Like busy-ness, productivity, and ambitions were packed up on the top shelf with the Christmas decorations, to be used at a later date.

Well, that’s not good. How am I supposed to do all this learning and adventuring with those things so out of reach, out of sight? I need to reactivate, jolt out of this hibernation, reclaim that energy and drive.

Drive, with the windows down, forward with a little caution for the lingering ice. Life has not stopped, has begun again even now – catch up! Oh but napping was so nice. Caffeine, that is the solution, surely.