Memory and Jamaican Drums

I frequently lose my car in parking lots, large and small.  My husband tells me that the way to deal with this is to take note of where you have parked.  The problem is that I don't always remember to "take note".  When I do remember to take note - no problema.

One rainy day at Costco, I was wandering the parking lot for well over 20 minutes, going up and down the lot searching for my car, pushing a full cart. Not fun!  A man finally noticed that I had passed him at least twice and asked if he could help.  I gave him the make of the car and then told him that the car had Michigan tags which ought to make it easier.  He drove around a bit and then got out of his car and waved to me shouting: "It's over here."

Another incident occurred at a local mall in which I wandered a parking garage having remembered to remember only to realize after a half hour that there was an identical parking garage on the other side of the mall.

After these two troubling incidents, I finally had one of those sudden epiphanies.  I thought about the car flags that Michigan football fans put on their cars when they went to games.  Thinking it would not be a good idea to have a Michigan football flag on my car in the land of the Huskies, I settled on an Irish car flag that has several designs on it, including a Celtic cross.  Perfect!  Felling as though I had discovered the secret solution to all the problems of the world, I happily took off in my car.  Shortly after this confident departure, I realized that the flag slapped my car as I drove.  I started to wonder how I was going to avoid getting really irritated and then realized that the "slapping" had a regular rhythm not unlike the sound of Jamaican drums. I thought of a line from one of my favorite movies "Strictly Ballroom" in which the Hispanic mother of a female dancer puts her hand on the girl's talented but uptight Anglo partner and tells him "Listen to the rhythm!" And so I listened to the rhythm as I continued to drive.   Sometimes it is simply a matter of perspective, little gifts from God that allow you to see the big picture even in the midst of a very small picture.  Go Irish!