Getting Lost

Picture: http://h3sean.com/beauty-lost/ 

This past Sunday, I learned a good lesson about life in general… I had planned a lovely outing with my children while my husband was practicing with his student band for the Battle of the Bands competition the next day… I had it all figured out in my head… loads of fun, lunch and then buy crocs for my son, who lost a pair in the Bay of Thailand. He left them on the beach to swim in the pool… came back a few hours later only to find one single Spiderman croc lying there on the sand missing its twin.

I was on the highway ten minutes later but my mind was on something else… I saw the turn off… took it but failed to take the left lane to the mall and continued straight to a long highway and places I had no knowledge of. I was driving into the unknown but I kept calm for my children… after 15 minutes of driving, I looked back and both of my kids were asleep… bliss… as I did not want whining, tantrums, cries or even simple questions such as “Are we there yet?” to disturb my thinking which had gone into over drive trying to figure out where in God's name were we.

I headed off in the car with a cranky daughter who was placed in ‘Calm Down Time’ for throwing her dishes on the floor during a tantrum fit and refusing to pick them up. Getting her to pick up her bowl and cup off the floor took us nearly 20 minutes... all this with ear splitting shrieks, crying, screaming.

I looked at some signs which made no sense to me but continued going straight…There were no exits... now where I can u-turn and go back... the signs were far apart... After a while I read a huge green sign with Rama IX written on it and it triggered a memory… I think I know this road… I have heard people mention it before… ok… anything familiar is better than nothing… so I took it and ended up paying a toll… If I were in the US or Canada, I would have easily asked the person in the toll booth to provide me with much needed directions, but in Thailand, you cannot assume they all speak English… which made me think that I must learn more Thai than the little that I speak now… So I continued on… but after a while, I noticed that my gas light went on permanently (nope it was not just flashing on and off) signaling the need to fill my tank now and only have around 20 KMs left before the car stopped... I was on an unknown highway… and so far away from any gas station…

I had to call my husband… I have to talk on the phone while driving???? I do not like doing that…and I had kids in the car!!!! But this was a different case… it was an emergency…

I then remembered that my phone did not have much credit and after I finished dialing the number, I received an automated message saying that I do not have many Bahts left and had to re-fill. AAAAHHHH! Another obstacle… how many obstacles can I take in a matter of a few minutes… So I called my husband and asked him to call me back because I did not want to lose the little precious Bahts that had left... I needed to save them for later… when he did, he was still at home and had not yet left to his band practice… Great so he is close to a map! The clouds are slowly dispersing…

After a few minutes of talking, he still had no idea where I was exactly to be able to direct me to the right path… (all this and the kids were still sleeping) I informed him that I could see the skyline ahead of me and therefore I was driving towards the center of the city… a place I only took Taxis to… I had hoped that this would help him find me on the map...

I was very calm and I am glad I was because I would not have been able to focus on getting out of that mess… I asked my husband if the Rama IX would take me back to Ramkamhaeng Road…which is a road I am familiar with... but he was unsure of that… anyway… to cut a long story short… I continued on the road I was on and then finally spotted a sign with the name of my road … I found a gas station after passing so many on that road due to the traffic… filled my tank (which was when the kids finally woke up), bought a new calling card and headed to the mall for some fun.... Phew! I was out of that mess.

It was a great day after that incident… the kids and I had a blast for five hours!

I guess what I learned today was this… I will face so many obstacles along my way… sometimes dozens in a span of minutes…. And the saying “When it rains, it pours!” is so true… It is as if obstacles come in crates… I cannot buy one at a time; I have to buy the whole lot…

If I just focused on being calm, knew that there is an end to this, understood that things happen for a reason… then everything will be all right… Maybe the reason behind me getting lost was to actually explore that area and discover that I can venture out more often in my car than taking the easy way out and use a taxi… or maybe it was to give my kids a chance to sleep for an hour and rest so that they would not be cranky and whiny while we were at the mall.

I dunno all the reasons behind me getting lost … but what I do know is that I can face any obstacle in my way as long as I stay calm and know for sure that things will get better sooner or later.