Last night we went to a party, Saint Aardvark and I. We took a taxi and left the baby at home with his grandparents, several bottles of wine and strict instructions to only eat one bag of chips. On our return taxi ride we scored The Gentle Hippy Cab Driver.
You know the one. He likes driving a cab for the solitude, the dark anonymity, listening to peoples’ stories if they want to tell them. If not, he’s content to drive in silence and the silence is never uncomfortable. Just as some are called to the church, the theatre or to accounting, there are a few gems who are called to drive cab. We had a gentle hippy cab driver once in Calgary. In fact, I was wearing the same boots that night that I wore last night. He was playing Neil Young in his car and his grey hair touched his shoulders and as we drove around the empty, foreign-to-us, snowy streets of Calgary, it was all so right. He could have driven me home to Vancouver and I’d have happily paid him thousands of dollars in cabfare.
Last night, our gentle hippy was a little more from column “I have smoked so much pot in my life that right now I am seeing Jerry Garcia where your heads should be.” He said, “all riiiiiiiiiiight” and “no proooooblem” a lot. We were in North Vancouver when we got in his cab and he said, “Do you want to take the Lion’s Gate Bridge or the Second Narrows?” and when he heard my loud, slow blink of confusion, (why would you suggest something SO WRONG?) added quickly, “Yeah, the Second Narrows probably… ” and I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “Yeah.” It was just like a Counting Crows song.
After some initial testing of the small-talk waters he left us in silence, hit the highway and drove and it was quiet but for the CBC Radio Two (the Radio 3 show, we think ) that played from the speakers behind our heads. The car was an old one, it smelled like vanilla and stale cigarette smoke and a little bit like donair and a very tiny bit like good pot.
We crossed into New Westminster and he just kept driving east and we just kept sitting, thinking our thoughts. The display said it was 22C inside the car and 10:45 pm and we owed $40. And then he said, “So…I’m just gonna keep driving straight….or you can tell me where I’m going…” Saint Aardvark directed him from there.
Half an hour later, on the couch. I was complaining to Saint Aardvark about how frustrated I am with my breasts. They have recovered sufficiently from my sickness and are now producing enough milk but refuse to let it out unless the baby is actually eating. I attempted for two days to pump enough milk so that Trombone could have dinner when we went out. My breasts wouldn’t let down. Without the let-down, the milk just kind of trickles, at a rate of about an ounce an hour. (WITH the let-down, the milk pours out at a rate of about 6 ounces in 15 minutes.) So I was pumping and pumping and pumping and sniffing the baby’s socks and looking at pictures of him and wrapping myself in his blanket and chanting his name (all of these things, except, maybe the chanting, are supposed to encourage let-down, with which I have never had a problem before) and my breasts just Would Not Do it. This, of course, makes me tense and angry and that, of course, is a great (by which I mean “terrible”) incentive to my breasts to release and flow and I KNOW that but my mind is so much stronger than my matter and not in a good way and Saint Aardvark listened for a while and nodded sagely and then said,
“Think of our gentle hippy cab driver.”
So I did.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Accept his wisdom,” said Saint Aardvark, waving his hands around like a television yoga instructor.
“The wisdom of the cab driver?”
“Think of it;” he said, holding up one hand to ward off my skepticism, “he was the driver. WE were the passengers. Yet HE waited for US to tell him where to go. You are the driver, but your breasts are the passengers.”
(He was kidding. My breasts are obviously the drivers. )
Today, though, I was thinking about it in serious terms; about taking a big, cosmic Moment, stepping back and henceforth making a conscious effort to allow that which is uncontrollable and not obviously harmful to simply exist. To make peace, shake hands, share a sandwich with the chaos. And if there is mayo on the sandwich? I just give that part to the chaos and eat the rest.
In other words, I need to calm the hell down. See my last entry if you need further evidence of this.
Wishing you peace in your homes & sparkly fairywands hovering over your heads for the entirety of 2007.
And a round of Kilkenny for everyone.
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