Literary Summits

So yesterday I was on track to have the perfect day…

• cozy breakfast at home
• a morning of skiing in the Kettle Moraine trails in southern Wisconsin
• a relaxing bath afterwards with time to read
• an afternoon walk with Joy and our dogs
• supper with friends and evening conversation over tea

Everything was pointing toward Sabbath.

But… on the way home, we were driving and this horrible noise started coming from our VW Beetle. Joy was driving and figured out that it was coming from the front left — probably a flat tire. We exited as soon as we could and stopped at the first gas station, on the corner of a very busy intersection (North and Western).

I should mention that it was 11:30 p.m.

Fortunately (?), Chicago had been warming up all day, so by the time I was crouching in front of the left-front tire, it was about 50 degrees — a far cry from the sub-zero temperatures the last time I had changed a flat on this car.

As I was struggling to get the lug nuts loose with Joy offering advice and counsel, a guy came over to “offer help.” He said he was a professional tire-changer, but in a glance we could see that he was simply looking for a quick buck. I let him try his hand at the lug nuts, but they held tight.

We were apparently making quite a scene, because another guy came over. He offered me a “warmer” — vodka in a plastic cup — and watched as I kept tugging on the wrench.

Finally, I got some purchase and the nuts budged, one by one. By this time, the second guy had offered Joy a notepad with his business info on it — boarding and wrecking services — while the first guy was keeping up a nonstop banter.

It wasn’t until we had put the spare tire on, stowed the other tire away, and were driving off that I realized (with Joy’s help) how precarious our situation was. My shirt was soaked with sweat, my hands were grimy and I felt fortunate that we hadn’t been mugged in that dark corner of the gas station.

And this is the part where “War and Peace” comes in…

The section I’ve just read follows Pierre — the clueless Russian aristocrat who is bumbling his way through Moscow as the French occupy the capital. He has survived the battle of Borodino, and now he is taken prisoner and tried for starting the fires that are consuming Moscow. It’s only at the last moment — when he is facing the French commander who has his life in the balance — that he stands up and makes a plea for his life.

For some reason (I still don’t fully understand why), Pierre’s life is spared. Yet he has to witness the other five men who are executed by firing squad.

OK, so my life is not nearly that dramatic. (Thank God!)

But as I read it, I’m reminded of how life thrusts itself on you in ways you don’t expect. I’m having a perfect day and then the tire blows out. Pierre’s living a complicated, but comfortable, upperclass existence when a war comes through his country. And everything is turned upside down.

Know what I mean?