These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

About a month before Jesse and I moved to Washington DC, we were in Australia with my brother, scuba diving and picking up phrases like, “Good on ya.” One night we watched a movie whose name escapes me but it was about a guy who moved to a brand new area, knowing  no one. In a voice over he wonders while he’s navigating his new neighborhood, how long will it take for these streets to be familiar? When will they hold memories?

I wish I had the entire quote. Actually, I don’t remember anything else about the movie, but the main character’s question traveled with me to DC. How long would it take for the streets I walked, drove, ran around on to hold memories? That is, when will I begin to feel at home?

Anyone who’s made a move across the country knows this type of thing takes time, years perhaps. For a gal who is an off the chart introvert (my first sentence was a command – “Don’t talk to me, don’t even look at me”), the process can be rather excruciating.  But I can look back over almost ten years of living in the DC area and say, “Yes, I have several memories of this place.”

But feeling at home? I think that happened on Friday in the parking lot of Dunkin Donuts when the bumper, or the fender, or maybe it’s called the siding was slowly scraped off while I happened to be driving the car.

I heard someone say once that the best way to tell if someone is guilty is if they start out an explanation with, “What had happened was…”

What had happened was it was National Donut Day. Did you even know there was such a thing? As far as I’m concerned every day is National Donut Day. But since it was a holiday and everything, I had to get donuts.  I felt obligated. Surely if I didn’t they’d add on more days to the furlough.

So Harper and I are in the parking lot eating our donuts and enjoying life. I had two and I don’t even care. I asked for three: one for me, one for Harper, and one for Hadley, but the lady gave me four and you just can’t give Callie more than one donut and assume she’ll save it for Jesse or for later. She won’t.

This might explain what happened next.

What had happened was it was time to pick Hadley up from school, and the fastest way to get to her school was to turn left out of the parking lot. I waited for what felt like three days to turn left and gave up because there were cars lined up all the way to the White House waiting to move forward in the lane I was interested in driving on. So I tried to turn right instead. That’s when I lightly scratched our car against a curb.

Lightly. It was a light scratch. Promise. I have no idea why three kids immediately put their hands over their eyes and screamed, “OH NO!!!!” when it happened. I have no clue why one woman made an “EEEK” face from her car.

Except when I started to drive away, there was a really loud sort of half roaring-half scraping sound that I could hear above the radio.  A semi-truck was driving in the parking lot next to me, and I thought, “Man, those trucks are so loud!”

It was only when Harper and I were driving down the road with no other cars that I realized part of the car was literally hanging by a screw or bolt, or who knows what.  That’s what was making the scraping noise.

At this point, it is starting to rain. I pull over, get out of the car and see what had happened. Apparently Callie should NEVER eat two donuts and drive. Ever. The question, though, was, is it safe to drive? I didn’t know so I text Jesse.  This is sort of how it went:

C: I need to talk to you right now.

J: I’m in the middle of a meeting with the Taiwanese Government.

C: The entire government?

J: I’ll call you back.

C: The thing is, I have done what some might call “major damage” to the car.

J:

C: What had happened was…

That’s when my phone rings.  At this point I’m crying. Sobbing, really. I’m afraid Jesse’s going to be mad. Plus, our car has this limb now that when driving, makes a sound so loud that meetings were interrupted in the Oval Office. Also, I’m not sure it’s safe to drive and at this point, there is about ten minutes before Hadley is done with school.

That’s when the streets in my neighborhood felt like home. If it wasn’t safe to drive, I realized that there were at least five friends – good friends – that I could call who would pick Hadley up. There was the friend down the street who’s known Hadley since before she was crawling. There’s the friend I carpool with who’s one of the most generous people I know. There were the friends from her school that I made this year that make me laugh so hard my stomach hurts and I knew that if I asked, they wouldn’t have minded getting Hadley from school.

Jesse wasn’t mad.  He asked me to text a picture to him and determined that it was probably safe to drive and that the damage is probably cosmetic. So I drive what is now our hoopty to Hadley’s school.  Have I mentioned that to get to the elementary school I have to pass by the middle school? Have I mentioned that the middle school gets out before the elementary school? Those kids looked at me like they were watching a parade or something.

I am still crying, probably coming down from the sugar and slight damage to the car, and it’s pouring down rain at this point.  Always the punctual person, I am one of the first people in the carpool line.  Kids start to come out of school and line up. They look at the car’s new limb, then look at me. I hear them say, “That’s Hadley’s mom. What’d she do to the car?”  I am thanking the Lord that Hadley’s not yet in middle school.

The PE teacher comes out of school.  On Friday, it’s his day to supervise carpool.  The PE teacher at our school is a superstar.  Everyone loves the PE teacher.  Of all the people I heard about first in school from Hadley, it was the PE teacher. I should also mention that he is the only male besides the janitor at our school. And the janitor passes out stickers so he’s a hero, too.

Anyway, the PE teacher, we’ll call him Mr. Miyagi, comes up to my car, a look of concern on his face. Slight concern perhaps, but concern all the same.  Maybe it was the mascara running down my cheeks.

“Do you know,” he starts pointing to the limb, but I cut him off.

“Yes, I know.  What had happened was…”

“Just a minute,” he says and drops his umbrella, kneels down and a few seconds later I hear a thunk and he pops up. “I fixed it for now, but I don’t know how far you should drive.”

“Thank you.” I say and behind Mr. Miyagi are kids screaming, “Hooray! He fixed it! He fixed Hadley’s car! Hooray!”

Then Mr. Miyagi says, “I hit curbs all the time. That’s why I have a truck.”

So Hadley gets in the car, and I hand her the donut – one with pink frosting and sprinkles. “It’s National Donut Day,” I tell her.

“Really? We should’ve made posters.”

“We should have. Next year,” I say.

And we drive home, our memories scratching and singing all over the streets.