Late night painting

It was late Friday night.We were at Janey’s house, playing hand and foot (it’s a card game like canasta; and the guys immediately pulled ahead but we trounced them in the end). Elai and Mikael were driving from Chicago with their Wheaton friend Ben. They’d left in the late afternoon, after their last class, and since they’d get in late, we were in no hurry to finish our game. We were giving Dawnelle a hard time for something she’d said, and we were laughing, and then the phone rang. I didn’t pay much attention until I heard Robert saying, “Oh. Are you all right? Where are you? Where’s the car?” Everything got real quiet.

They’d been in an accident and were standing on the side of the road with the tow truck. They  had swerved to avoid hitting another car that suddenly wasn’t where it was supposed to be, spun out, hit one guard rail, bounced off the other guard rail, smashed the car on all four sides, and ended up on in the middle of the highway facing the wrong direction. It was midnight. They were ok, just a bit banged up. No charges. Thank God. But they were also in some small town called Duran with no way of getting anywhere, and they had a wedding shower at 1:30 the next day. What do you do?

We had to go get them. Four hours each way. We went home to get a few hours of sleep first, but after crawling into bed, lights out, we both lay there not sleeping, so we got up, bundled into the car, and started driving. Everything was dry until we hit the “death corridor” somewhere between London and Sarnia at 4 in the morning. Suddenly we faced driving sleet, then snow, then more sleet, just the combination you like on a dark, cold night. The ground and the road was white with snow, and more white came knocking at the windshield, horizontally, defying gravity, like tiny suited warriors out of Ender’s Game, playing with your mind. Robert commented dryly, “It’s disorienting, isn’t it; makes you feel like you’re not moving.”

We slept an hour under blankets outside some rest stop and kept going. At the border, we told our story to the guard. It was an especially slow night. We were the only customers. He was sympathetic. “Deer,” he asked? Duran is in the middle of hunting territory, and the shop where the car was towed had a sign out front: Specializes in Deer-hit damages. I got the impression all that guard wanted to do was finish his red-eye shift, get in his truck, and go hunting. He was almost human. We stopped at a McDonald’s for coffee, and at one table six men in full camo were debating some fine point of hunting while two young boys, also in full gear shuffled past us, disheveled and sleepy but ready for bear. Or deer. They start them young, apparently.

On we went to find our kids at the Quality Inn in Duran and the smashed up Saturn on a tow trailer. Several bills later, we were on our way. Back across the border. Back through death corridor, still snowing, back to a little community center in a tiny town called Silverdale. We were fifteen minutes late, but the welcome was extra warm, the snacks were plentiful, the decorations were creative, the gifts were generous, and the relief to be home with the kids all in one piece was palpable. We had a great weekend with them, nailed some details for the wedding, ate well, and then drove them to Buffalo to take a bus back to college.  Not one hassle at the border. That’s a relief, since radiation has started, and I was sure there’d be alarms, and one was enough for one weekend. This morning is quiet. It’s raining. The kids should be just getting home from downtown Chicago. I miss them already. They paint your life with unexpected colors, and you can’t imagine a more beautiful painting or wish for one.