Unforeseen Delight

Am I the only one out there who has so many adventures at the grocery store? Yesterday I locked my keys in the car after I had finished unloading all my groceries into the trunk. Fortunately I had the baby with me (i.e., she wasn’t in the car). That would’ve been a nightmare, for sure.

The first thing I did (like I usually do whenever I find myself in trouble) is call Kevin. Unfortunately Kevin was in the middle of a moot court (his first appellate arguments are next week!). So, I left a message with his receptionist and then dug through my wallet to see if we had any kind of roadside assistance with our insurance company.

YES we do have roadside assistance; yet another thing to be glad about.

The lady with our roadside assistance asked me for the address of the grocery store. Because I didn’t have this on hand, I walked inside to customer service to get it. While the kind man behind the desk was writing out the address for me, Meredith started crying. It was past time for her to eat and I knew she would be hungry soon. Then … my cell phone started beeping that it would soon be out of batteries.

That was a trying moment in my life – juggling my near-dead, beeping phone, attempting to communicate with the man behind the counter and the lady speaking in my ear, with Meredith contributing a penetrating background noise, all while coping with the realization that my cheese and milk were spoiling in the trunk and I wasn’t going to get anything productive done for the rest of the afternoon.

Somehow [God’s grace] I made it through that moment.

Soon Meredith and I were sitting on a bench outside the grocery store while I attempted to feed her in the midst of a very bustling environment. At this time, the tow truck company called to let me know it would be nearly two hours before they could get to me. Argh … Patience has never been my virtue, I’m afraid. Maybe God ordained all of these to teach me that I should have more of it?

After Meredith was done eating, she sat in my lap and smiled and flirted with every person who walked by (a lot of people). She seemed to like sitting outdoors and, at this point, the breeze was very cool and enjoyable. So, I decided that this waiting for the tow-truck wasn’t so bad after all. Practically every elderly person stopped before entering the store to chat with Meredith and give her compliments. And, of course, they wanted to tell us all about their own grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One lady was from Russia and she told us she has ten grandchildren. Another lady talked to us for about five minutes while waiting for her husband to park their car. She was happy to tell us that her granddaughter just had twin boys … “but she had to use a surrogate mom for health reasons,” she said. Another man smiled a toothless smile and asked if Meredith was a boy. Another woman asked if I thought her eyes would stay blue and couldn’t believe she was only ten weeks old.

And to think it was only because of my scatterbrained stupidity that I was able to get the chance to meet so many pleasant people.

So, what I thought would be a bad experience – being stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be for an extended time – turned out to be quite enjoyable.

I wonder how many other “unchangeable” things in life would be significantly more agreeable if I would just embrace it rather than bemoaning and resisting it.

It turns out that Kevin called me after moot court and was able to come rescue me a half-hour earlier than the tow-truck could come. I always love an excuse to see Kevin mid-day. Maybe I should “accidentally” lock my keys in the car more often. [Just kidding, Kev.]