You Can't Get There From Here

Every Christmas and every Easter we spend the holidays with the family in Northern Virginia. We've been doing it for as long as I can remember, and every year, as we drive into the area from New York, we say, "My gosh, there's a lot more traffic down here than I remember" or "When are they ever going to finish this construction?" or "I just don't know how people actually live down here - you can't get anywhere!"

It's true, being 15 minutes outside of Washington, DC, there are a lot of people racing along the highways here, most of whom are late, everyone's always in a rush, and every year there are more and more people on the roads. Areas that used to be horse farms and wide-open fields are now shopping malls, highways and housing developments - nothing wrong with the economy in this area, it appears. As a result, driving is very stressful, and even going to the grocery store can be a harrowing experience. We've always told our nephews, if you can learn to drive in this part of the country, you'll be able to drive anywhere!

Since Chris and I don't drive in Asia, it's exciting to jump behind the wheel of our rental car when we get home and feel the lure of the road under us as we drive hither and yon along the East Coast to visit family and friends over the holidays. That is until the inevitable happens: I get lost on the myriad of roads and highways that cover the Northern Virginia and DC area. To be fair, we never get lost when Chris is driving; since he lived in Northern VA for many years during various times in his life, he instinctively knows his way around and is undaunted by the fast pace of the traffic, the unmarked merges, the bobbing, weaving and jostling for position along the city's highways, and the astounding amount of signage they've put up for every imaginable road, route or roundabout you could ever hope to negotiate. With me, however, it's a completely different story.

My daughter says we should have a bumper sticker on our car that warns, "I'm not a tourist. I just drive like one." And how accurate that would be! The running joke in our family is that not a holiday goes by that I don't wind up driving for literally hours along roads I've never seen in neighborhoods I've never been, simply because I took a wrong turn somewhere or merged onto the wrong highway somehow. Sadly, my sense of humor about the whole thing evaporated years ago, and whoever is riding shotgun with me these days inevitably takes the brunt of my stress as they try futilely to figure out the GPS while I drive further and further afield, often at very high speeds.

This week we've had one of Maggie's friends visiting with us from a tiny town in North Carolina where she lives. There are barely any stop-lights in her town, let alone major highways, snarled traffic, and high-speed rush hour races that close down streets and block off access ramps, confounding even the most experienced DC drivers. She experienced first hand the mania of getting lost with us one afternoon, and even though we inadvertently toured DC neighborhoods she never would have seen otherwise, when we finally got home, she jumped out of the car and promptly declared, "I'm never living in a big city - ever!" I'm quite certain I've scarred her forever! (The stress even got so high at one point that Maggie, riding shotgun, poor child, turned around and told her friend that if she couldn't be helpful, she should just get out of the car. At which point, I quietly locked all the doors and stepped on the gas!)

So today's picture of a mother bird sitting on her eggs in a nest that she built over the light fixture on the front porch is, to my mind, strangely poetic. This little bird doesn't stress about traffic or road signs or getting lost or even where to find a gas station when she's running low on fuel. She maps out her routes, all of which lead her home to her perch on the porch, and I can't help but think she's quietly laughing at us as we race in and out, dashing here and there, endlessly complaining about the roads and the traffic. She's been a little vision of calm for me this week as I drag myself up the steps and through the front door at the end of a long day. I'd love to have a little chat with her about how she manages to get around so easily, always finding her way back to the nest. I'm sure, if I listened very carefully in the quiet of the evening, I would hear her chuckling, telling me, "Don't you know, silly, you can't get there from here!"