Arms Length

Since last summer, I have lived near a railroad crossing. I have a crazy schedule with early and late hours and usually a break in between. I try to go home during my breaks when I can. Time is not always on my side during those breaks since I usually have an endless list of tasks that need accomplishing. I always hope that I will miss one of the many trains on my way to or from. They stop traffic blocking my path when I am almost there or have just left. They can take what feels like twenty minutes but is probably more like 15 to pass. If I do not have a single minute to spare it drives me crazy and I feel trapped and helpless. I have tried to figure out a way around the train and come up with none until recently. I was in my car getting out of the parking spot when I heard it coming. I knew I did not have time to wait for it to pass. I thought desperately as I got to the end of the drive trying to come up with an alternate route. I looked both ways about to drive into traffic when it hit me. All I had to do was turn left instead of right. There was a way to avoid the train altogether and get me back to the interstate I needed. And it had been there right in front of my face the whole time.

I felt a little dumb at first for not noticing the solution to my problem was always there. But I realized that is just sometimes how solutions work. They sit at arms length until you are ready for them. Sometimes we are just too close to the problem to notice the solution or we have to take ten steps back instead of two for the vision to come into focus.

This is also how I felt when I realized that my fiancé and I had been in the same place at the same time so many times at least since I was 13. As a teen I would lie on my bed on hot summer afternoons listening to Barbra Streisand and watching the clouds roll by out my window. I would wonder if there was a guy out there somewhere for me and what he might be doing. I would wonder how long it would take us to meet. Now I wonder if we ever did meet before our first date. Steven says he wishes we had met earlier. But I tell him that I wasn’t ready yet. Even though I felt for years like it would never happen and I knew in my heart I was ready, I was not. But there he was at arms length until I was ready to reach for him. I am so lucky he was still there. Exactly one year ago today that we made it official. Happy Anniversary Steven!