Brakes! The brakes!! HIT THE BRAKES!
I’m sitting in a general store in small-town Vermont today, eating lunch and taking in the stillness. There’s a few other people in the log-cabin-like building, but everyone’s moving slow. Calm. The vibe here is “unhurried.”
When I’d first walked in, that was not my vibe.
It’d felt like slamming on the brakes. What surprised me, though, was that it didn’t feel jarring. Like, there was no jolt or discombobulation... there was a split-second of feeling scolded for going too fast but then it gave way to a much-needed sense of relief. Sure, this abrupt change of pace isn’t all that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it’s made me glaringly aware of how I’ve been boosting the throttle bit by bit for a little too long, now. Come to think of it, I’m fried.
Whoops.
I’m sitting at big square, wooden table in one of those hand-made chairs that have the spindles along the back and arm-rests that feel like you’re sitting on a throne. As I’m chewing my panini-pressed grilled cheese, with bacon, green apples and arugula, I’m trying to figure out where I learned to move from “oh fuck, not good!” to “ok, how’d that happen so we can try something different?”
What I’m picturing certainly isn’t the moment I mastered it, but it was an inciting incident. When I was a kid, my dad had this riding lawn-mower that he’d let me drive sometimes, without the blades engaged. I was probably too young to be cutting the grass, anyway. So, I’d just drive around the yard. It didn’t take all that long to get the hang of things like spacial awareness, shifting gears, or judging the turning radius. Every now and then, though, I’d get stuck and dad would have to take over.
There was this feature where, if you stood up, it acted like a kill-switch and the engine would shut off. That’s usually how we’d swap places when I needed help maneuvering; I’d hop down and dad would climb into the driver’s seat. Well, one day he asked if I wanted to try parking in the garage. That made me nervous, but I let myself get talked into it. Looking back, there was no real set-up, intro, or guidelines... he just kind of gestured from the lawn toward the spot in the garage where I knew he kept the lawn mower.
I lined it up perfectly.
Then, I inched my way forward until I could see the headlights shining across more and more of the wall. That’s when I stood up, and when the tractor kept moving. No kill-switch this time. I drove straight into the wall. CRACK. It was only then that dad started to yell “Brakes! The brakes!! HIT THE BRAKES!”
I’m finishing my sandwich and feel my chest tightening. My heart’s racing, too, so I remind myself that it’s just a flashback and that my dad is not, in fact, pissed off and running towards me. I exhale. Looking around the wooden interior of the general store, I feel myself start nodding. I’d come in here stressed out and jittery. As far as crashes go, this one’s mild.
Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
296/365
When you hit a wall, what helps you move from damage control to rest and recovery?
onward.
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