On my way to present at a conference on the other side of the state, several warning lights suddenly glowed on my car’s dashboard. Being an optimist, I assured myself it was a fluke. (My husband, an engineer and a realist, has a more precise term for this: avoidance.) But when I pulled off at the next exit and opened my door at a gas station, I smelled burning rubber. I was an hour and a half from home, an hour from my destination, and I had a very flat tire.

Several hours later, with help from a tow truck driver and a kind customer service representative at the Costco tire shop, I was back on the road and headed toward home, having never made it to my event. I did, however, manage lunch with my cousin, who drove quite a ways to meet me and salvage part of the day, despite finding a nail in her own tire and having to turn around to borrow her husband’s vehicle to get there. (It was apparently a day for it.)

When I recounted this no-good, very bad day to a friend, she said, “You’ll find something to write about from this.” I was doubtful.

We have entered what Vermont singer-songwriter Noah Kahan has dubbed “Stick Season,” and the last of the fall leaves crunch under my feet when I walk our dog. I feel the melancholy of early November. Someone recently asked me what season best describes my personality, and as the daughter of apple growers and an educator, I felt obliged to say fall. The truth is, I’m not very good at fall. As I’ve written here before, I’m a summer girl. I prefer blue skies, warm temperatures, and long days of light. I don’t get excited about pumpkin spice anything. And fall moves us toward darkness. Since the first of the month, when we turned the clocks back, it’s been nearly dark by 5 p.m.

Fall requires more of me. It asks me to come to terms with the passing of time. I have three teenage sons in those years between adolescence and adulthood, and I joke that I often wake at three in the morning and give each of them a turn to be worried about. Parenting, like fall, requires letting go. I’ve heard it said that leaves don’t fall from the tree; the tree lets them go. It’s a beautiful metaphor. At least for the trees. My own letting go doesn’t feel nearly so graceful.

In January I shared my word for the year: slow. I promised I would work on leaving urgency behind. About a week later, a kind man at church saw me leading my pack of boys, rushing in on a Sunday morning to find a seat, laughed, and said, “Hey, Dana. Remember? Slow down.” We make resolutions for the things we’re not good at, which means we pick a struggle to face head-on. I’m not sure how I’ve done.

I know my propensity leans toward urgency. The news feels urgent. Requests in my inbox feel urgent. My work feels urgent. My kids’ requests for help are most often urgent. It’s hard to slow down until life finds a way to require it of you.

So there I sat in the driver’s seat at the Sunoco station, sipping mediocre gas station coffee and watching the sun rise over a cornfield, forced to sit with my own thoughts for forty-five minutes while I waited for help. At one point, I pulled my journal out of my bag and thought, I’ll be productive. I had barely uncapped my pen when I realized I was in no state to write. I’ll admit I scrolled on my phone for most of the wait. I texted a friend at the conference, asking her to let the organizers know I wouldn’t make it, and told her I wasn’t feeling like such an independent woman. She reminded me that part of independence is knowing when to delegate, when to ask for help. 

I had to accept a lot of help that day. I also had to accept that I wasn’t going to get where I was going or do what I’d planned to do. Once we get past the disappointment, there’s a bit of relief in that, isn’t there? The admission that we can’t do it all, and that it’s just going to have to be what it is.

October here was exceptionally warm and sunny. I’m not sure the leaves hung on any longer than usual, but they seemed to be negotiating. I kept reminding myself to take advantage: get a few more walks in, work from my three-season porch, enjoy every golden afternoon as long as it lasted. But this week’s forecast threatens that I’ll need to dig my winter coat out of the closet. 

We are entering the darkest days, and that resolution I made 11 months ago is still teaching me: the hardest part of slowing down can be sitting with yourself. It takes courage and honesty, and admitting some things we’d rather not.

There’s a lot of talk about writers finding their own voice. For me, it’s less about searching for my voice than about quieting the noise in my head long enough to hear the small, still, and steadier voice that’s audible only when I slow down enough to listen.

I’d rather not have had a flat tire. I’d rather have made it smoothly to my destination. I’d rather have been right that those blinking lights were a fluke. But I don’t think it was an omen. Some people might disagree, but I’m not sure God ordained a piece of metal in my tire, or whether it was simply bad luck. 

What I’m less likely to believe these days is that everything happens for a reason. What I’m more likely to believe is that when things happen, someone shows up: a friend, a tow truck driver, a man at Costco who gives you the floor model instead of sending you away. We can rush around each other, or we can slow down and see each other. We can blame things on God’s will, or we can try to be the presence of God. And sometimes we get to be the one on the receiving end of things. Sometimes we are the one calling for help and needing a bit of saving.

I will hold onto the leaves as long as they hold on. I will slow down to hear them crunch under my feet. And when the snow comes, I expect I’ll be held, and slowed in other ways. The world tells us to grow, change, and evolve. But maybe every season also invites us to sit, a little helpless, on the side of the road, and receive.

Header photo by Da-shika on Unsplash
Tree photo by Trinayan Mohanraj on Unsplash