Lonely Red Octagon

Pain is a lot of things. It’s complicated. It can help you, and it can hurt you. And at the same time. It fills my every second, but it doesn’t consume me. Well, it does sometimes, but the years have given me tools to live with it, not to fight it.

The pain I speak of includes both the chronic state most of us bury under the busy, and the acute condition that refuses to be ignored. It is physical, emotional and spiritual. All at the same time.

We try everything to be rid of it. We run from it. We hide from it. We fight it. We medicate it away with drink and drugs and food and adrenaline and anything that will give the illusion of relief. Anything that will numb our pain. Numb our hearts. And numb our true need.

But do we ever look at it? Do we ask its purpose? Do we stop long enough to see what it is trying to teach us?

We cannot gain freedom from it without walking through it.

But that seeing takes work, and what I really want is rest.

And my story continues …

Not as tired as her, I get in the driver’s seat.

As I back out, she hands me a spoonful of oatmeal. I return the empty spoon and put the car into drive. The tires spin and then catch hold.

Driving passed the first side road, “I guess we’ll take the main road today. There’s a little too much snow, don’t you think?” The words feel like thoughts, but float out in a soft whisper.

She nods, the spoon clanks against the little glass bowl. Her face says it all. We’re not going to talk this morning.

South Iliff Drive dead-ends two blocks later at State Road 114, Jasper County Hospital directly ahead. To our left, Steven’s office is dark. Once upon a time, Mom would already be at work typing out insurance claims, readying rooms, counting pills, pulling the days’ charts.

Turning right, 114 is clear. Clear of snow. Clear of ice. And clear of any sign of life. In less than a half mile, we cross the Iroquois River. It flows but the banks are frozen. Our turn is just ahead. Another right.

The spoon clanks with the glass, and I swallow more oatmeal. This is just a country road but it’s paved and we’re only on it for two miles, when it jogs to the left, then right, kicking us out on to County Road 380.

A whisper thin layer of fresh snow blows along the top three inches of flat Indiana farmland.

I have driven 380 thousands of times at all hours of the day and night and in all types of weather. It’s so familiar, I could drive it blindfolded. A fifteen mile straight line interrupted at the halfway mark by a lone stop sign. Frozen, rutted soil sails by. Thousands of corn stalks impale the ground surrounding us, cut down in the harvest three months ago.

The melancholy oatmeal exchange continues. She knows when I’m ready for the next bite before I do. Words without words.

Five hundred feet away, a quiet intersection with a lonely, red, octagon prompts me to slow. Mom leans forward placing the empty bowl on the floorboard. The clanking spoon makes one last utterance as it pops out of the bowl, settling on the floorboard. She glances up, then flies back colliding against her seat.

Our eyes meet as she flings her arm against my chest. Blinding light besieges me.

Fear. Raw fear. In her eyes.

My foot flies to the left. Crushes the brake, plunging it through the floorboard.

Mom!

Excerpt: Flying Lessons, Angela Kari Gutwein

Are you breathing? Take in a really deep one – slowly fill your entire core and hold it.
Now exhale everything.

The Flying Lesson
Be Willing to Walk Through Hell

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