When Good Times Go Bad

Well, our first outing to the Zoo turned out to be delightful... to a point.  Just about to the point at which it was time to go home, when suddenly my car decided to DIE as I was driving it onto Rock Creek Parkway in the middle of D.C.  I would've really panicked, in all likelihood probably freezing in my dying-engine tracks as the rush hour traffic crunched around me.  Fortunately, Mumma (the little one's maternal grandma) was in the car with us and served as the voice of reason.  "Pull off the road as best you can.  Get off the road and into the bike path."  And you know what?  That's exactly what I did.  We coasted off the road, baja-ing from the left lane all the way to the right, with other drivers swearing and swerving around us, my mom offering calm guidelines, the little guy babbling away, thankfully oblivious, and myself a bundle of tense nerves... slowly coming to a rolling stop on the bike path as the mid-afternoon sun blazed down upon us. I won't torture you with details of the 2 hour long wait, but it involved my husband hitching a ride with his colleague to rescue me, my mom, and the baby (who was, saints be praised, the most patient little guy throughout the whole ordeal, not crying once) and a tow truck NOT coming to pick up my car until almost midnight that evening!  Good thing we decided not to wait around.  

It was a nightmare, to be sure, but somehow through it all I felt lucky, and, as I rocked the little one to sleep that night, exhausted and sunburnt after an enjoyable day at the Zoo and a not-so-enjoyable ordeal on the parkway, I realized how extremely lucky we were.  Just to be able to chalk it up to an annoying but somewhat humorous event, rather than a heinous disaster with an unspeakable outcome.  Maybe my son knew this all along, his patience a testament to his gratitude.