The weeks leading up to Nashville were filled with crippling anxiety and uncertainty, as COVID-19 fought for the world’s throne, taking no prisoners. Millions of jobs were lost; thousands of people had died; and grocery stores were scrambling to stock shelves in response to the masses grabbing anything and everything as though the apocalypse had descended upon us. And as for me? I hadn’t been a stranger to uncertainty, as it had been loitering around my personal space since November and I could feel it setting up camp in society. Its vibrations were palpable.
I debated long and hard about driving to Nashville for many reasons. The drive was filled with apprehension, but I made a commitment and I was on a mission to find something. While on a backroad along 40 West, I passed a pasture with hills that rolled just right and a creek that danced with the sun. Luscious trees dotted the creek side. In the 20 seconds I had to analyze the passing landscape, I decided it was there that I would find what I was looking for and I was determined to stop on the trek back to Raleigh.
Four days and a lifetime later, I loaded my Honda Civic with every physical and emotional bag that it could hold and made my way back to 40 East. He sat in the backseat, sandwiched between the door and boxes of his clothes and books. His 1939 Gibson guitar was nestled safely on the floorboard along with his crutches, while his legs rested on the middle console. I’m typically not a fan of feet, but I didn’t mind having his bare ankles as an arm rest for the nine hour drive from Nashville to Raleigh.
Between the podcasts and conversations, I kept my eyes wide open for the pasture with the hills that rolled just right. At that moment in time, all I wanted to do was watch the sun dance on that creek. I needed to see and feel grace in the natural world, because at that point, everything I thought to be certain was certainly not.
The gas gauge fell below empty, and he needed to stretch his long body that had been stuffed in the backseat like a card in a billfold. I purposefully chose an exit that was off the beaten path, desperately wanting to find that special patch of grass. A tree, under which I could sit and soak in the breeze, was waiting for me.
Driving onto and off the exit, we pulled into a country gas station that looked as though it had weathered a few storms or two. I parked beside the gas pump, and we slathered our hands and arms with hand sanitizer. The scene outside the car was exactly what you’d imagine a gas station between the Tennessee and North Carolina mountain border would look like. There was a petite woman, most likely in her late 70s, early 80s, sporting fluffy, pink earmuffs, a floral button down, and classic grandma jeans. Another woman stood by her old, beat-up truck with wild hair that teetered the line between a mullet and a long bob. Her dog stood in the truck’s bed, waiting for its turn to run.
I opened the back door and let him fall into my arms, helping to pull him out of the backseat. He nestled his crutches under his arms and hopped to the door of the gas station, looking for the bathroom. But to our surprise (why would we be surprised), the bathrooms weren’t inside. They were porta potties (my actual nightmare)!
After apprehensively pumping gas, I bravely entered and exited the portable bathroom. He was nowhere in sight. Making my way to the car, the woman with the wild hair started backing up her truck beside the gas pump in front of mine - her dog barking at its competition in the front seat of another car.
“Your dog is so happy and expressive,” I said as she walked around the truck. “Oh, she just wants to run,” she replied with an Appalachian Southern accent that was familiar to me. I asked her the breed of her dog and it so happened that the dog was the same breed as mine - an overprotective Mountain Cur.
He was still missing in action as I talked to the woman with the mullet bob. As we chatted, I couldn’t help but think how different we were. The stickers on her truck told me that she was as hillbilly as they come. My off-white dress, ball cap, and Blundstones screamed city girl who was trying to connect with her country roots. And even though our differences were more obvious than not, I didn’t feel them.
I looked her in the eyes and asked her name. “Darlene,” she responded. Her eyes lit up. “Yours?”’she asked in return. “Taylor. It’s so nice to meet you, Darlene!” I replied with enthusiasm. “You are just so beautiful,” she said with deep sincerity. My face all but dropped. She must’ve seen something underneath my tired, heavy, and sad eyes. Maybe there was light seeping through? If there was, I didn’t feel it. “Well, thank you,” I accepted with apprehension. Then it was her turn to look me in the eyes. “You made my day - blessed my day,” she said.
In that moment he crutched back up to the car. I tipped my hat to Darlene as a way to curtsy and wished her well. Closing the door and putting the key in the ignition, I sighed. For a brief moment in time, the lines between two very different humans were blurred because in reality, we were more similar than not. I saw Darlene for who she was, a human who is just trying to survive and walk this earth with the stories she’s been told and the lot she’s been dealt. And Darlene showed me the gift of grace, the grace that exists between humans just trying to figure out where they belong in this life. She gave me what I wanted to find in the pasture where the hills rolled just right and where the sun’s light danced upon the creek: grace to be kind to and to accept every part of myself that I so often ignore when it’s time to sit around the table.