When I was a teenager, my mom had a car with a horn that would randomly go off sometimes while we were cruising down the highway and sometimes while it was sitting in the driveway in the middle of the night. I’m not sure which was more embarrassing, waving to people on the highway and giving them a quick shrug of the shoulders as an apology or waking up at two in the morning to this distant whine, like a drone of a mosquito that can’t be swatted away, and realizing it’s not a mosquito at all, but the car, some Stephen King she-devil.
My own car these days is picking up some quirks. It’s the power windows most recently. A month ago, I rolled down the driver side window to drop a letter in the mailbox and then couldn’t get the window back up. I was sitting at a stoplight, pushing the up button with one hand and physically manhandling the window with the other. Finally, it came up. But since I never know when the window’s going to work, most recently, I’ve not used it at all. It’s a pain. Who knew I rolled down the window so much?
This morning I woke up with vertigo, my first bout of it in more than three years. It was depressing and I was angry and it was a horrible way to start the morning. Though the spinning only lasts as long as I have my head in a certain position (in this case lying down on my left side), I’m left feeling woozy for hours after. I had every excuse to not move from my condo today. I had every excuse to sit in this darkened cave and feel sorry for myself. And I actually did that for about an hour or so.
But then, motivated by an article in the newspaper, I headed out to the Viera Wetlands (yes, I was well enough to drive, no worries) to take pictures of the birds that had migrated there for the winter. I had been to the Viera Wetlands before, but it had been awhile and I had a new camera to try out.
As I drove around the park, sometimes I stopped and got out and snapped a few pictures, but sometimes, I was just too tired to get out. And so I took a risk, and rolled down the window, smiling as it came down smoothly and holding my breath each time it stuttered and struggled to come back up again.
But it was a risk worth taking. God let me capture some of the most beautiful photos I have ever taken including the eyes and nostrils of an alligator sitting just above the surface of the water as concentric circles expand out and around and then later, the body and head of the same gator as he moved through weeds. A great blue heron actually flew to me and posed twenty feet from the car. Another bird—I’m not sure what type, I haven’t looked it up yet—stood in the sunlight in such a way the light seemed create a halo around its head. And I wondered if angels sometimes appear as birds.
Life is so short. This is the lesson I have learned over the past few months. It is so short. And even on the days when I wake up with vertigo, even on the days following the nasty fevers that have plagued me for the past two years, even when I wake up in pain, I know I am blessed. If I can get up out of bed, if I can walk, if I can drive my car out into nature to take photos, then I know I am blessed.
I am blessed with life.
Today Gabby Giffords resigned from Congress. A year after a gunman’s bullet nearly took her life, she is still recovering. She still needs help to walk. She still hasn’t regained her ability to speak with any of the fluency she once was capable of. But she gets up out of bed every morning and she strives for something. She strives to be strong. She strives to hope. She strives to live.
And I’m sure she would agree that she is blessed.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring us. We don’t know if that power window will come back up once we have rolled it down, but we take the risk anyway.
We get up.
We walk out into the world.
And we live.
