Losing Control

West Texas sunset. 2022. by watson.

A few years ago I’m visiting my family in Texas and, I’m doing one of the more ‘Texas-y’ things you can do - I’m driving a pick up truck down a country road after a thunder storm.

It was just after dark and you could see a sliver of the sun as it set and the scene out my window was an idyllic West Texas setting. Ranches, rolling hills, scrubby Mesquite trees with an occasional stand of oak trees; an indigo sky with a smattering of clouds that looked like cotton candy puffs. Closer to the horizon, the setting sun blasted out it’s last day finale in colors of purple, oranges and pinks. It was a magical dusk just after the chaos of a western thunderstorm. I’m driving. Windows down. It was cool outside, but I had the heater on; winter’s version of sleeping in the summer with the window unit blowing on high, the fan on medium and you have the heavy blanket on the bed to keep warm.

All is right in the world.

My brother Luke and my cousin JoJo they are in the car and following behind me, but I’m not really paying any mind to them. I’m just looking out. Smiling. Enjoying the moment. Doing my best to savor it.  Then the road dips down, and without warning or notice, I’m plowing into what looks like a small pond that has formed in a low part of the road after the rainstorm moved through. Water splashes high on the truck, covering the windshield. I can’t see clearly, and I begin to hydroplane. I’m losing consistent control of this truck – and I wasn’t speeding, but speed limit on this road is 55 and I was doing every bit of it when I hit the water. I start sliding from one side of the road to the other and back again, and back again, and back again, and back again. I see the fence lines of on either side of me come close and retreat, come close and retreat.

I am out of control.

I’m moving the steering wheel, but the truck isn’t behaving. I knew enough to know – don’t hit the brakes. If you hydroplane no brakes. You just got to ride it out. Finally, the truck makes it through “Lake Chaos” and shimmies forward. I ease up and pull off to the side and climb out and I’m shook.

My brother and JoJo, watching all this from behind crept their way through the water unscathed and watched my dance with disaster from a safe distance. They get through the puddle, and pull up to me, and get out of the car. Jojo says to me, “Man I’ve never squeezed my butt hole so tight as I did watching you skate all across the road. I thought that truck was going to flip. Man I thought you were gone!”

 I said,”yeah. Me too”.

You see one minute you can be cruising down the road, and watching the Almighty paint the sky majestic with his magic paintbrush of color and the next you can be faced with the fact that you have no control over things. And the next minute still, you realize that all of it – the colors, the chaos, and the recovery were all in the hands of the Almighty all along.

This truth is comforting and distressing all at once. Sometimes it is reassuring to know that someone bigger than me is keeping things moving, and at other times I find myself wondering, “what the hell?!”. I suspect there will be days that will prompt me to awe and wonder and stir in me a sense that all is right in the world. And, they’ll be other days where the things I normally use to steer might life no longer do right and the cosmos reminds me that I’m less in control than I like to think.

Undoubtedly there will be days ahead that take my breath away because of their beauty and other days because of their tragedy. I want to soak it all in. Keep my hands on the wheel and my butt cheeks tight.