Driving through snow
December 20, 2008
As I was making it up the hill on Dufferin Street, my wheels spinning despite the new snow tires, it totally hit me. I couldn’t NOT make it.
You see, between 7:30 and 4:30 today, a ton of snow fell on Toronto, and the drive to pick up the kids was pretty bad. The worst spot was the aforementioned hill. Cars were getting stuck, poor sods with no snow tires had no chance and had to turn back. One guy put his hazards on and bailed on his clunker right at the steepest spot making it that much more exciting for the rest of us. Snow AND obstacles. How nice.
I have to say I did a risky thing. Instead of waiting my turn to go around on the left hand side of the abandoned vehicle, I took the inside track between te car and the sidewalk. The snow was deeper and the room for error was less. But I figured the new tires would get me through. I went on pure gut. Luck was on my side and I shimmied my way past and on up the hill.
But as I was doing that, it really hit me. I had to get through. I mean I had no choice. The kids were at school, waiting to be picked up, and I had to get here. If for whatever reason I couldn’t make it in my car, I would have been in a really bad predicament. It would have taken me at least an hour to travel the final few kilometers. I probably would have had to walk. The kids would have been miserable, hungry, tired, and would have had to walk a long long way to the bus stop in a frigid blizzard to get back to the car. Not my idea of fun.
Its not that often that you get hit with a situation where if it doesn’t work out, some fairly major implications come to pass. This one would have been fairly short term, but pretty intense with its ramifications. In my cozy North American life, I am so rarely inconvenienced in any considerable way, and I take it for granted that I can get where I need to and give my kids what they need.
So I’m pretty grateful that I had shiny new snow tires and got lucky and could get to the school in time. I felt absolutely victorious as I pulled into the drive. And my close call put my desire to be there for them into a unique focus. In that moment I really saw the depth and intensity of that desire. And that’s a pretty cool thing to get to have a sense of. Just how much I love those boys.
