I felt impelled to get out of the house and go for a drive. I ended up at the Bellingham mall with the vague idea that I might go Christmas shopping.

As I headed into Macy’s a young woman approached me – she looked scared. She said her baby was locked in the car with her keys and she asked me if I could let security know. I went into Macy’s and let the customer service people know the situation. They needed to know the model of the car and where it was parked, so I went back out and asked the young mother if I could watch her car and baby while she went inside to talk to the customer service people. She thanked me and I took up my post by her car.

When I looked in the window I saw her baby was crying – so I said, “Hi Sweetie! I’m right here with you!” and she started giggling then and smiling at me. There was a little toy suction cupped to the window and the baby reached up and started playing with the toy – like she was playing with me – and we spent the next minute or so laughing at her toy together.

The baby’s mom came out then, and pretty soon folks in uniforms joined her at her car to help her.

And the thought occurred to me that maybe that was the whole reason I’d felt like I’d needed to drive and ended up at the mall – I hardly ever go there, and it was weird for me to decide to go there today.

I bought a red vest and a new pair of jeans and then started my drive home.

And the clouds and the rain and the gray evening light enveloped me in a peaceful bubble. I’d put in a CD of hymns sung by a pair of young brothers with a youthful energy, and as I listened to the hymns I thought of my mom and remembered all the times she’d sung those hymns to me. I could feel her love with me. As I drove through the Chuckanut Hills, I thought of the hikes I’d taken with Dad and felt his love, too. And then I remembered driving this same route when I was bringing the sons home from swimming lessons when they were preschoolers and I could almost hear them laughing with each other in the back seat. It seemed a lifetime ago, and just like yesterday.

“He leadeth me, O blessed thought! O words with heav’nly comfort fraught…” And suddenly I felt myself connected to all the other people in the cars moving with me on I-5. And for a moment our kinship with each other was so clear to me. I felt us all moving together in a cosmic murmuration. Normally I try to exit onto the backroads, but I found myself passing the exit I might normally haven taken and I realized I WANTED to be with the other folks on I-5.

My drive home was other-worldly and beautiful.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell