Over the 4th of July weekend my husband and I decided take our kids down to Pennsylvania to visit my grandmother for the day. What is typically a little over a 2 hour drive one-way, ended up being close to 4 hours as we shared the road with the 36 million other people that were traveling that day.  Overall we were all doing fine in the car, that was until my husband had to go to the bathroom.
We stopped at a small gas station, and while my husband went inside to use the bathroom, I put gas in the car.  After I was done filling up, he still hadn’t come outside.  I waited for a couple minutes and still no sign of him. “Huh? I wonder what is taking so long? He’s not really doing THAT in a gas station bathroom is he? Can’t he hold it?” After about 15 minutes of waiting for him, I decide that I should move the car so others can use the pump and I’d have a better view of inside the store. But much to my annoyance I realized that he had the keys with him, so I couldn’t move the car.  I decide to text him to see what was taking so long. “You OK?” which is immediately sent to his phone that was right next to me in the door panel. Grrrrr…..So he has the keys but not his phone, and now the kids start “Where is Daddy? Why is he taking sooooo long?  I’m hot!  How much longer to Nana’s? I have to pee!” I feel my blood starting to get warm with annoyance as I mumble to myself “Where the FUCK is he?” Followed up with an “I hope he’s ok.” Because at this point in my mind there are only two options of what is taking so long – he’s either in there shopping for something to drink and not caring about how long we have been waiting, or someone is holding up the store and he is hiding behind a cooler.
In situations where its out of my control, my mind tends to err on the side of irrational and I start envisioning how the situation would be reported in a newspaper. Â To my credit, when I am not in the moment, I have enough insight to know that this behavior can be hurtful to those on the receiving end because I am not factoring in their personality, but right now, in this moment, I am thinking in headlines…”Man’s dying words in PA shootout…”I had too much coffee, I just had to pee…”or “Wife kills man on 4th of July because he couldn’t hold it.”
He finally comes out like nothing is wrong, no spring in his step, no comment on the amount of time he had been in there, no explanation as to why he was in there for 20 minutes! I can’t let it go, I have to say something!
“You OK?” I say with an edge.
He responds like it’s the stupidest question I have ever asked, “Yeah, why?”
“Seriously?…Because you were in there for 20 minutes, you have the keys, and no phone! I wanted to make sure you were OK.” Sounds sincere, no?
“What do you think I am doing in there? The line is 10 people deep and there is only 1 bathroom!”  I know that I didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt because what actually happened, which is a completely reasonable explanation, never even crossed my mind. But he doesn’t know that my mind was racing with unreasonable explanations and that I didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt, so how could he mad at ME?!
“Seriously?” I ask, as we get back in the car and start our trip again, but this time in silence. You could feel the tension steaming from both of us, which only got worse when he took the wrong exit. As I sat in the passenger seat, I immediately flashed back to when I was a kid and my parents, my brother and I would go visit my grandmother.
Each trip started the same way – my parents getting into a screaming match, about who knows what, 5 minutes before were about to head out the door to go to my grandmothers. Once it got to a boiling point, my father would storm out of the house, start the car and sit in the driveway and just stew. The longer it would take us to pull ourselves together, the worse it would potentially be for us once we got in the car. I still remember the smell when I opened the car door…it smelled like anger and unhappiness. Sometimes my mother just couldn’t help herself and had to make sure my dad understood her point (sounds familiar), which invariably started the screaming all over again. Other times no one would talk and we would just sit in silence, which was always worse because of the anticipation of what might happen.  In both cases, my brother and I would just sit in the backseat, stiff as boards, in fear that the slightest move would set my father off. We just wanted to survive the car ride that always included rage induced erratic driving with exaggerated stops at red lights, tailgating the car in front of us, slamming the stick shift into gear, and stomping the gas pedal when the light turned green. My brother and I would talk to each other in the backseat with our eyes “When will this be over? Are we almost there?”
Flashing forward, back to my car with my husband, it all felt so eerily similar. I thanked God that the kids were “plugged in” and so focused on their devices, that they didn’t see or feel any of what was going on.  I never ever want my kids to feel the way I did all those years ago in the backset of our brown Honda Civic wagon.  I decided that I had a choice. I could either continue to stand my ground (that is built on a foundation of irrational thoughts) and endure his silence and his building road rage, or I could try and break the tension.  I look over at my husband and ask “Dad, is that you?” My husband just rolls his eyes and smirks at me in his little way as the blood starts to make its way back to his knuckles as he loosen his grip on the steering-wheel.  I know that to mean that he forgives me, because he knows me and he knows how I think (sometimes better than I do) and he knows my story.  He knows that that is my way of admitting that I was being ridiculous and that I know that he’s a better person than I gave him credit for, but he also knows that it means to stop driving like an asshole – NOW!
This is why I love my husband, because when I read “my newspaper” I take it as truth, when he reads it he often reminds that I shouldn’t always believe what I read.