I began this morning by listening to a podcast by John Green and in it he talks about a flower growing from a crack in the pavement. It is a familiar sight and a familiar trope used by writers to explore the juxtaposition of futility and hope. Those often go together don’t they? That somehow we shake our heads at the futility of a small frail flower trying to grow where no flower should be and at the same time we appreciate its tenacity and hope. Hope that rather than being crushed beneath a heartless tire or desiccated by the dry summer heat, somehow the little flower would thrive and push apart it’s little crack just a little more and a little more and eventually a small garden of verdant beauty would establish itself in the barren wasteland, conveniently spread before the doors of the grocery store.
Where I live we are blessed and cursed by ample snowfall, blanketing our lovely hills and driveways and parking lots in equal measure of beauty and inconvenience. In an effort to clear the parking lot for the Christmas throngs the plowmen will plow the snow into the last or the first parking spot - the most coveted of all parking spots. And inevitably there will be insufficient snow (or sufficient melting) to not quite completely fill that parking spot and there's the rub.
I’m never quite sure how my day will begin with the woman I’ve chosen to spend my days, but I know at some point we will quietly share a conversation before we are swept away to work or chores or insistent technology. I treasure these conversations. Today, on the first day of the new year, we discussed the partially-snow-filled parking spots and the perils of parking beside one. They are tempting, you see, these spots that lay in wait beside the snow pile, because you get your spot and some of the spot next to you. Sometimes as much as 1 ½ spots for the price of one! They are hard to pass up, but pass them up you should because most of the time someone will try to park in the snow-pile spot and you will return to find a monster truck ominously leaning over your car or a not-so-compact, compact squished next to you and sticking out into the aisle. In the stiff competition of the parking lot there is never a free lunch.
I wonder what makes them do it, these snow-pile parkers. Is it yet another challenge to grind beneath their knobby tires? Another mound to further compensate for the lack of moundage in their life? Or is it the “excuse me, excuse me, pardon me” mentality of the itty-bitty-me, trying to squeeze between the inconvenient populace? (“Can’t they see that I need to speak to the manager?”) Or is it something else? Something I hadn’t considered as I tried to squeeze through my half-opened car door.
Is it that, like the pavement-crack-flower, hope springs eternal? Do they see a parking spot where clearly there is none? Do they see a challenge where there is only futility? We may never know. We midsize drivers, we between-the-lines parkers, we SUV’ers, desperately trying to convince ourselves we are not just driving station wagons. We may never know. And so I will choose to see the hope, the tenacity, the can-do attitude as I pass by on my way to the comfort and convenience of a mid-aisle parking spot. I will choose to see their beauty crookedly springing forth from the snow-pile like a flower.
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