In Bumpy Praise of Potholes
Driving down the road, rodeo-style
Let me tell you: driving this brief stretch of road feels like riding the back of a bucking bronco. I’m clocking less than10 miles an hour, and it feels like I’m being reckless, as if my groceries will bounce out of the back of the truck.
No one can maintain a conversation with the jostle-rattle-shake-pound, although my husband lets out a few profanities. The more we drive over them, the worse they get, but I’ve never known a soul to put their life on hold for a pothole.
The main road is just as maddening.
The parade of cars driving to town in the morning have all taken to the left-hand lane to avoid the cataclysmic holes and accompanying damage done to the front ends of our vehicles.
Imagine my surprise when this morning I was leading the parade when a SCHOOL BUS came around the corner and we all quickly diverted back to our proper lanes.
Are we willing to sacrifice our lives for the inconvenience of a few bumps? Apparently so.
When my kids were little, entire mornings were spent playing in potholes.
They called them “ponds,” if that gives you an idea of their size.
I would stand on the side of the road, sipping my coffee, grateful for the free entertainment and the warmth of spring. There was no other place to be, and pothole play guaranteed a decent afternoon nap.
Some days I would abandon all pretense and just say “go for it,” and hose them off when we got home.
These days, potholes are a nuisance.
But they are part and parcel of Alaskan spring, they indicate having made it through a long freeze-thaw, and they are, in their own way, beautiful.
Praise is not always smooth, is it? It’s full of bumps and potholes. Sometimes I feel like a road worker with an orange vest and safety helmet going around and flagging all the pits, so no one gets hurt or makes my same fumbles.
With my kids, whom I mostly adore, I spend my days citing potholes too: clean your room, take a bath, help me with a five minute clean up, brush your hair.
Maybe the days of my kids playing in potholes were a kind of baptism in learning how to be fully alive. Instead of getting from place to place, we were surrendering to the moment at hand.
I expect the grater will come by in a few days: a large piece of forked equipment that will scrape and level and make the road uniform. Driving will be smooth again and I will quickly forget, in the way that we do, this annoyance of spring.
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Thanks for reading! Here are some links to some more of my stories about life in Alaska:
