Saturday, December 15, 2012
Alive at the DMV Part 9
December 15, 2012: our fourth and final time at the Jeep dealership. We take possession of our new car. We drive it off the lot. We look at my phone. 5:55. All four times, people!
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
"Alive at the DMV Part 8"
A quickie: went back to the Jeep dealership yesterday, did our business, got back into our car, and the time was.......5:55. And the last three numbers on the odometer were........555. Someone tell me this veil between the worlds is not getting thinner and thinner and thinner!
My number at Native Foods was not, however, 55 this time. It was 69...not a number to turn my back on either, thank you very much.
<See Part 9>
My number at Native Foods was not, however, 55 this time. It was 69...not a number to turn my back on either, thank you very much.
<See Part 9>
Sunday, December 9, 2012
DMV Part 7!
"December 4, 2012"
Of course this is going to be about cars. If you have been following this DMV thread all along, you’ll understand: after our Jeep test-drive last week, Lily and I returned to our favorite Jetta, where Lily pointed out that it was 5:55; then we saw that the license plate in front of us had five fives, after which celestial communication Lily announced, “My dad wants us to get a Jeep but he wants us to get it from a different dealership. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.”
He’s still around. More evidence? I wrote this entire blog and headed to Native Foods for lunch, and was handed my order number, which was 55. Before I explain to newcomers (or you can just go back and begin at DMV Part 1 for some remarkable heavenly stories) I just have to pause to honor that the veil between the worlds is delightfully thin; I still don’t understand where “dead” people are, how they can be here, how they can send signs and summons, and I don’t have to understand.
The night months ago when I first posted about the 55s, I pressed “publish,” left the house, started the Jetta, and was delighted to see that the time on its always-expressive dashboard was 5:55. Satisfying punctuation after my 55-heavy blog post.
Imagine how guilty (or at least ambivalent) I must feel about selling that car.
But its lowered suspension and low-profile wheels make us cringe over bumps; it feels like we’re breaking the car in half. On the other hand, I regularly do 100mph on Lake Shore Drive—80, actually, before I’m even off the entrance ramp—and as the g-forces press into me, through the euphoria I realize not only should I not be doing this, I should not be giving my 16-year old a car that is capable of doing this. (God, I like to go fast. Maybe I won’t sell it.)
I’ve grown to love the Jetta. Yes. Strong words for a car that I initially found irritating. Lily and recently I decided that the only vehicle that could possibly tempt and un-guilt us would be the opposite car: a Jeep. A red Jeep. A slow (ie safe), visible red Jeep that will munch potholes and get us through the 2012 Apocalypse in one piece.
Five seconds into our first Jeep test drive, we glanced at each other with a look that acknowledged, “We are bad-ass!” Sitting so high up we could drive right over the Jetta—if it didn’t drive under us first. In red, it was unmilitaristic and frankly kind of hot…with us in it. Back into this red Jeep when you’re parallel parking in front of us and it will SEVER your bumper.
Based on Lily’s intuition I made an appointment with a different dealership, one that felt more Barrett-approved. For some reason I got a slew of 4:44s, all day long, weird because they don't have meaning to me other than the inherent beauty of the repeating numbers. Fours: whatever.
More fours later though.
The guy on the phone for the car dealership has a great voice. So savory. That morning I had asked Barrett for some car-buying assistance; it’s his specialty. I once told him he should start a business helping women buy cars, and just be their advocate. I can't tell from Kevin’s sexy voice how old he is or even what race, which is intriguing. We arrive at the dealership and there are greeters, like bouncers, outside, hanging, waiting for vulnerable buyers, and a big round black guy—a bluesy sort of guy—approaches and introduces himself to us and I say we're here to see Kevin, and he says I'll take you to Kevin, and we have to sit in plastic dealership chairs while we wait for Kevin and Kevin arrives and I am—hang on, I have to break in to say this: Barrett and I had a tiny wedding with dinner for 20 at a favorite restaurant. When our waiter came to the table he was so hot-African. Protected by my hours-old wedding ring, I could not help say, "Are you my wedding present?" (That’s me, after zero cocktails.)
So Kevin is introduced, and maybe it was the insouciant way his shirttails poked out from his v-neck, but I feel a completely inappropriate remark welling up--just like at my wedding dinner...where Barrett was, of course, also present. I am saying to myself, "Don't say it, it's totally inappropriate," --but I don't even know what I'm about to say. I just know, in that manic moment, I shouldn't. When Kevin announces that the bluesman is going to take care of us, he departs and I backhand Lily on the thigh to see if she was having as good a time as I was and she looks at me and says, "MOM. Pull yourself together.”
But my point is, we were at the right dealership and this was going to be a treat: in addition to Kevin reminding me of the manic moment when I saw our wedding-waiter, the bluesman reminded me so much of the salesman who sold Barrett my current Honda CRV, the car guy who was so so good at being a car guy that Barrett looked him up years later to buy another car from him. The car guy who was so so good that in a world where I don’t remember names AT ALL (please don’t test me at a party!) I remember Tony's. Tony was an experience—a car experience—that Barrett and I had shared in a major way. Tony is now a Baptist minister so he can’t sell cars; Barrett is now “dead” so he can’t buy cars, but I sure did feel them both there, orchestrating an experience that I otherwise didn’t want any part of. Hi, guys! I was overjoyed.
To be honest, it was not easy to stay in mirth at a goddamn car dealership, but our guy met me at my level, totally got how I operate, and the only time he got a bit sales-y I said, “I want you to know that we have two cars that we really like and I have no car payments and I'm happy to keep it that way, and we don't actually NEED a car. In fact I’m happy not to buy a car at all. And the more you push me, the more I want to keep my old car.” I saw Lily, out of the corner of my eye, frantically disagreeing, which was not helpful to my buying process, but I ignored it. Later in the conversation, the bluesman said, "Now normally I would talk for ten minutes about why you needed to buy the car tonight..." and I interrupted, with a smile, "But you know if you do that I won't return your calls or EVER talk to you again." I am learning how liberating it is to just say the thing instead of thinking it needs to be said in some special way.
When the bluesman walked away to consult with his people for the seventh time, an hour into negotiating, I told Lily I had no recollection of what his name even was. How embarrassing, now that we had even seen pictures of his kids. She didn’t remember either—odd for her, normal for me. She volunteered, for a mere $10, to ask his name.
David. Barrett’s brother’s name.
When we were leaving David told us that daughters’ names both started with L. Lily wanted to guess his son’s name.
“Is it also an L? Leon,” I said before she could guess, because it had to be Leon; it was the boy-baby name that Barrett and I had completely disagreed on—me being pro-Leon of course—a big issue between us. But no.
“Hint: it’s the same as my dad’s,” David said, and I said, “David!”
Indeed.
“David, David, David,” said David, “All Davids, my dad, his dad, David David David,” and I almost said, “OK BARRETT, STOP!” No need to hammer it home like that. We got it. Buy the Jeep.
And then David said one more thing. To Lily.
“Family,” said David. “Family is the most important thing. Remember that. Remember your family. Family,” said David.
Yes, I shed a tear. At the car dealership. Barrett’s presence was palpable.
So I took a walk when we got home, car half-bought. It was a balmy night in December.
On the walk I realized I was not entirely relaxed about taking on a car payment and mind you it's a tiny car payment but that's not the point. The discomfort is the point and as a yoga teacher I know what to do about discomfort. It was rather an arresting thought so I just stopped and arrested myself: listened to the wind in the trees, felt the balmy breeze, and was grateful I could even be outside and warm at the same time, while minutes passed. At some point I thought, “I wonder if I look insane,” and then I made myself relax through that discomfort until I felt a level of prosperity: “buying a new car makes me feel prosperous!” and I was good to go.
So I walked a few steps further, and there on the sidewalk was a dollar bill, moist with dew and sticking there so it couldn’t possibly blow away, and its timing after that prosperity meditation was so uncanny that I had to stop and pick up the penny from heaven (inflation!) and it was also sort of ego-busting in itself to stoop to pick up a dollar when someone else might need it more, when someone else must have dropped it, yet at the same time, the night had been all about money and here some is! So I peel it of the sidewalk and glance at it, and it has four fours on it. Another 4444!
And maybe all dollar bills have four fours; how would I even know? I have never stared one down. Whether or not they do, this one did. I don't need to analyze or know why or know what anything means...the Universe has ways of communicating, the Universe IS communicating, and how cool that we are in a dialogue—I’m honored, standing there, on December 4.
Still in the magic, still in the prosperity, knowing Lily’s daddy is so not dead, savoring the dollar bill with the four fours on it, I walk a few more steps and a happy guy rides past on his bike singing a Christmas carol and I catch the words, "a jolly happy soul!" It’s euphoric; it’s over the top, why those precise words, in this moment of soul-connection?
It must be heaven on earth.
To ground myself, to bring it back to reality, I look at my phone, open facebook, and the first post on my newsfeed is from my friend Chrissy, saying, “Can you feel it?! Can you feel the SHIFT?!!!!”
“Yes,” I comment. Yes.
Having written all of the above the following day, I headed to Native Foods, where my order number 55 was presented to me, as perfect punctuation bestowed upon me by a generous Universe that loves us all far more than we can fathom.
Of course this is going to be about cars. If you have been following this DMV thread all along, you’ll understand: after our Jeep test-drive last week, Lily and I returned to our favorite Jetta, where Lily pointed out that it was 5:55; then we saw that the license plate in front of us had five fives, after which celestial communication Lily announced, “My dad wants us to get a Jeep but he wants us to get it from a different dealership. Don’t ask me how I know. I just know.”
He’s still around. More evidence? I wrote this entire blog and headed to Native Foods for lunch, and was handed my order number, which was 55. Before I explain to newcomers (or you can just go back and begin at DMV Part 1 for some remarkable heavenly stories) I just have to pause to honor that the veil between the worlds is delightfully thin; I still don’t understand where “dead” people are, how they can be here, how they can send signs and summons, and I don’t have to understand.
The night months ago when I first posted about the 55s, I pressed “publish,” left the house, started the Jetta, and was delighted to see that the time on its always-expressive dashboard was 5:55. Satisfying punctuation after my 55-heavy blog post.
Imagine how guilty (or at least ambivalent) I must feel about selling that car.
But its lowered suspension and low-profile wheels make us cringe over bumps; it feels like we’re breaking the car in half. On the other hand, I regularly do 100mph on Lake Shore Drive—80, actually, before I’m even off the entrance ramp—and as the g-forces press into me, through the euphoria I realize not only should I not be doing this, I should not be giving my 16-year old a car that is capable of doing this. (God, I like to go fast. Maybe I won’t sell it.)
I’ve grown to love the Jetta. Yes. Strong words for a car that I initially found irritating. Lily and recently I decided that the only vehicle that could possibly tempt and un-guilt us would be the opposite car: a Jeep. A red Jeep. A slow (ie safe), visible red Jeep that will munch potholes and get us through the 2012 Apocalypse in one piece.
Five seconds into our first Jeep test drive, we glanced at each other with a look that acknowledged, “We are bad-ass!” Sitting so high up we could drive right over the Jetta—if it didn’t drive under us first. In red, it was unmilitaristic and frankly kind of hot…with us in it. Back into this red Jeep when you’re parallel parking in front of us and it will SEVER your bumper.
Based on Lily’s intuition I made an appointment with a different dealership, one that felt more Barrett-approved. For some reason I got a slew of 4:44s, all day long, weird because they don't have meaning to me other than the inherent beauty of the repeating numbers. Fours: whatever.
More fours later though.
The guy on the phone for the car dealership has a great voice. So savory. That morning I had asked Barrett for some car-buying assistance; it’s his specialty. I once told him he should start a business helping women buy cars, and just be their advocate. I can't tell from Kevin’s sexy voice how old he is or even what race, which is intriguing. We arrive at the dealership and there are greeters, like bouncers, outside, hanging, waiting for vulnerable buyers, and a big round black guy—a bluesy sort of guy—approaches and introduces himself to us and I say we're here to see Kevin, and he says I'll take you to Kevin, and we have to sit in plastic dealership chairs while we wait for Kevin and Kevin arrives and I am—hang on, I have to break in to say this: Barrett and I had a tiny wedding with dinner for 20 at a favorite restaurant. When our waiter came to the table he was so hot-African. Protected by my hours-old wedding ring, I could not help say, "Are you my wedding present?" (That’s me, after zero cocktails.)
So Kevin is introduced, and maybe it was the insouciant way his shirttails poked out from his v-neck, but I feel a completely inappropriate remark welling up--just like at my wedding dinner...where Barrett was, of course, also present. I am saying to myself, "Don't say it, it's totally inappropriate," --but I don't even know what I'm about to say. I just know, in that manic moment, I shouldn't. When Kevin announces that the bluesman is going to take care of us, he departs and I backhand Lily on the thigh to see if she was having as good a time as I was and she looks at me and says, "MOM. Pull yourself together.”
But my point is, we were at the right dealership and this was going to be a treat: in addition to Kevin reminding me of the manic moment when I saw our wedding-waiter, the bluesman reminded me so much of the salesman who sold Barrett my current Honda CRV, the car guy who was so so good at being a car guy that Barrett looked him up years later to buy another car from him. The car guy who was so so good that in a world where I don’t remember names AT ALL (please don’t test me at a party!) I remember Tony's. Tony was an experience—a car experience—that Barrett and I had shared in a major way. Tony is now a Baptist minister so he can’t sell cars; Barrett is now “dead” so he can’t buy cars, but I sure did feel them both there, orchestrating an experience that I otherwise didn’t want any part of. Hi, guys! I was overjoyed.
To be honest, it was not easy to stay in mirth at a goddamn car dealership, but our guy met me at my level, totally got how I operate, and the only time he got a bit sales-y I said, “I want you to know that we have two cars that we really like and I have no car payments and I'm happy to keep it that way, and we don't actually NEED a car. In fact I’m happy not to buy a car at all. And the more you push me, the more I want to keep my old car.” I saw Lily, out of the corner of my eye, frantically disagreeing, which was not helpful to my buying process, but I ignored it. Later in the conversation, the bluesman said, "Now normally I would talk for ten minutes about why you needed to buy the car tonight..." and I interrupted, with a smile, "But you know if you do that I won't return your calls or EVER talk to you again." I am learning how liberating it is to just say the thing instead of thinking it needs to be said in some special way.
When the bluesman walked away to consult with his people for the seventh time, an hour into negotiating, I told Lily I had no recollection of what his name even was. How embarrassing, now that we had even seen pictures of his kids. She didn’t remember either—odd for her, normal for me. She volunteered, for a mere $10, to ask his name.
David. Barrett’s brother’s name.
When we were leaving David told us that daughters’ names both started with L. Lily wanted to guess his son’s name.
“Is it also an L? Leon,” I said before she could guess, because it had to be Leon; it was the boy-baby name that Barrett and I had completely disagreed on—me being pro-Leon of course—a big issue between us. But no.
“Hint: it’s the same as my dad’s,” David said, and I said, “David!”
Indeed.
“David, David, David,” said David, “All Davids, my dad, his dad, David David David,” and I almost said, “OK BARRETT, STOP!” No need to hammer it home like that. We got it. Buy the Jeep.
And then David said one more thing. To Lily.
“Family,” said David. “Family is the most important thing. Remember that. Remember your family. Family,” said David.
Yes, I shed a tear. At the car dealership. Barrett’s presence was palpable.
So I took a walk when we got home, car half-bought. It was a balmy night in December.
On the walk I realized I was not entirely relaxed about taking on a car payment and mind you it's a tiny car payment but that's not the point. The discomfort is the point and as a yoga teacher I know what to do about discomfort. It was rather an arresting thought so I just stopped and arrested myself: listened to the wind in the trees, felt the balmy breeze, and was grateful I could even be outside and warm at the same time, while minutes passed. At some point I thought, “I wonder if I look insane,” and then I made myself relax through that discomfort until I felt a level of prosperity: “buying a new car makes me feel prosperous!” and I was good to go.
So I walked a few steps further, and there on the sidewalk was a dollar bill, moist with dew and sticking there so it couldn’t possibly blow away, and its timing after that prosperity meditation was so uncanny that I had to stop and pick up the penny from heaven (inflation!) and it was also sort of ego-busting in itself to stoop to pick up a dollar when someone else might need it more, when someone else must have dropped it, yet at the same time, the night had been all about money and here some is! So I peel it of the sidewalk and glance at it, and it has four fours on it. Another 4444!
And maybe all dollar bills have four fours; how would I even know? I have never stared one down. Whether or not they do, this one did. I don't need to analyze or know why or know what anything means...the Universe has ways of communicating, the Universe IS communicating, and how cool that we are in a dialogue—I’m honored, standing there, on December 4.
Still in the magic, still in the prosperity, knowing Lily’s daddy is so not dead, savoring the dollar bill with the four fours on it, I walk a few more steps and a happy guy rides past on his bike singing a Christmas carol and I catch the words, "a jolly happy soul!" It’s euphoric; it’s over the top, why those precise words, in this moment of soul-connection?
It must be heaven on earth.
To ground myself, to bring it back to reality, I look at my phone, open facebook, and the first post on my newsfeed is from my friend Chrissy, saying, “Can you feel it?! Can you feel the SHIFT?!!!!”
“Yes,” I comment. Yes.
Having written all of the above the following day, I headed to Native Foods, where my order number 55 was presented to me, as perfect punctuation bestowed upon me by a generous Universe that loves us all far more than we can fathom.
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