I should have left last night. I should have followed through on my plan to go to the grocery store at 3 am to see if they were out of milk and bread, but not flour and yeast and all the other things that you can use to make bread. Instead, nestled under blankets, contentment tucked under my chin to keep out cold breezes, I went to sleep.
As a result, I find myself on the Kennedy Expressway, the merging of routes I-90 and I-94 into and out of Chicago, in a blizzard. I'm driving like a Sunday driver, 35 miles an hour, and thanking whatever patron saint there is for safe travel every time we have to pause for whatever. Each time we pass an accident, I tell myself not to look. Just get home, just get home.
A van from New York passes me, and as the driver changes lanes, a beautiful spraying wake of slush arcs over two lanes of traffic to splatter across my windshield, blinding me. As the wipers restore my sight, I read on the back of the van the business tag line:
Specializing in:
I wonder if fulfillment meant
wish fulfillment,too. Then I wonder if it would have been better to pay for a
tow truck to tow my car home. Then, I realize it sounds like I have a
flat tire. Oh God, not a flat, not a flat, not now. I hit a small bump and the car runs smoothly.
Snow. I list in my head the reasons why I would leave my house once I get there, so there is no
ambiguity. Three more exits. Two. One, and another splashing arc from another lane. And then, as the wipers clear...
Home.