Had one of those days today when you get a little glimpse into what is really important.
Let me start by saying that my hubby had to work late today, for the second day in a row. It’s tough when he’s not home in the evenings. Tantrums and two boys in high chairs and raucous baths are much easier to stomach when there is backup, I always find. So, all day long, I was thinking of the evening ahead with a certain muted dread.
My mom watched the kids today while I was at work, and when we met for me to pick them up the rain was pouring down. As every parent knows, moving two children and their gear into a car in the rain, without umbrellas, is quite a feat. Even more of a feat, though was trying to figure out how the heck to defog the inside of the car, which — what with the open doors, the dampness outside, the bodies inside — quickly fogged up. I absolutely could not see clearly. This, I should add, is a rental car; my normal trusty coach is at the body shop, getting a new bumper (little rear-ender incident a few weeks ago).
So I sat, in the rain, two boys in the back seat, reading the KIA instruction manual. For ten minutes.
Let me pause to say that I consider myself a fairly intelligent person.  Even though I am, admittedly, far more sleep-deprived than any human has a right to be and still be upright, I don’t think the problem was really me. I think the problem was the instruction manual, which had cryptic little diagrams and directions which seemed to assume that I possessed some secret gnostic knowledge of the vehicle. If I were an English teacher (which I am) and this instruction manual were a paper I was marking (which, fortunately for the KIA people, it wasn’t), I’d have question marks with “Clarify” written all over the margins. I would also encourage a rewrite.
Anyhow, with the help of my mother, some paper towels, and some blind pushing of promising-looking knobs, I got the window defogged. Off we went, the boys and I, onto a rainy highway, a half-hour’s ride or so from home.
And it poured on the way home. POURED. I hate driving in that kind of weather; I hate it even more when I have the boys in the backseat, and I am all too aware of how precious my cargo is; and I really hate it when I’m not in the car that I know and love and trust. There were tense moments, quite a few, and some tight gripping of the steering wheel.
And, suddenly, all I wanted to do was get home. I wanted to get home to my messy house, to an evening of the craziness of trying to change and feed and bathe my boys. That domestic insanity became something devoutly to be wished: an end point, a reward to a harrowing journey.
And when we did pull up in front of the house, the rain had stopped. I unloaded all the gear and both boys, and looked around my house with a sense of peace.  I had made it; I was safe at home, with both my sweeties. The evening ahead had a cosy, rosy glow to it.
It’s always nice to see clearly.
