Rules of the new car

I was recently introduced to that poem by Wesley McNair and I was moved to tears. So much of our lives we want to see it come in a certain package and when it doesn't we rebel, complain, feel sorry for ourselves and refuse to see the life in front of us.  

Examples from my own life include having my kitchen flooded and feeling very sorry for myself for a few weeks - I miss out on the life in front of me when I am having a pity party.   Insisting my children plan and have a life I imagine for them instead of allowing it to unfold the way they design it or more likely, stumble their way to.

We wait for our lives to be perfect or just right. When The house is remodeled or clean. When Our bodies are smaller or more muscular. When We have more money.  When we graduate or have a better job. When we retire.

Waiting is not living. I say this as much for myself as others.  

As Tara Brach says. "This too"


The Rules of the New Car
After I got married and became
the stepfather of two children, just before
we had two more, I bought it, the bright
blue sorrowful car that slowly turned
to scratches and the flat black spots
of gum in the seats and stains impossible
to remove from the floor mats. "Never again,"
I said as our kids, four of them by now,
climbed into the new car. "This time,
there will be rules." The first to go
was the rule I made for myself about
cleaning it once a week, though why,
I shouted at the kids in the rearview mirror,
should I have to clean it if they would just
remember to fold their hands. Three years
later, it was the same car I had before,
except for the dent my wife put in the grille
when, ignoring the regulation about snacks,
she reached for a bag of chips on her way
home from work and hit a tow truck. Oh,
the ache I felt for the broken rules,
and the beautiful car that had been lost,
and the car that we now had, on soft
shocks in the driveway, still unpaid for.
Then one day, for no particular reason except
that the car was loaded down with wood
for the fireplace at my in-laws' camp
and groceries and sheets and clothes
for the week, my wife in the passenger seat,
the dog lightly panting beside the kids in the back,
all innocent anticipation, waiting for me
to join them, I opened the door to my life.

By Wesley McNair, from Lovers of the Lost: New and Selected Poems.
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only 

My husband was always the one who tried enforceable is about our car and me and the kids and the dog never listen. 

Life is messy but it is also beautiful and the messiness.