Minix Road

Guys don't ask for directions. I don't have that problem. I get directions. Apparently it's the getting back part that gives me trouble.

Last week I left work during lunch to visit a co-worker that's home on maternity leave. She lives about ten miles from where we work...ten miles of curves, dead ends, weird intersections and lots of turns. I made it there fine and kept the paper with the directions in my purse when I left. I figured that I had gotten there okay, I would be fine remembering my way back.

I was wrong.

I knew I was supposed to turn left, which I did, onto Minix Road. I followed it for quite a ways. Then I got to that point where you have second thoughts. Was I so absorbed in getting there that I missed seeing this church? I don't remember that house... After this comes the acceptance that you are on the wrong road, but yet there's the hope that it will end in a place that's familiar to you.

Minix Road ends at Fischer. I don't know Fischer. There are no familiar landmarks to the right or left. This, I suppose, is as good a time as any to turn around, and I once again pass the house and the now familiar church.

I turn left at the end of Minix and then make another left onto the road I was supposed to originally take, Shaw. Yes, Shaw is looking familiar.

Well wouldn't you know that Shaw also ends at Fischer. I have this huge moment of "duh." Why didn't I recognize Fischer as a road I had taken just two hours earlier? Oh well, I wouldn't have known which way to turn onto Fischer back there anyway. No big deal.

A few miles down the road, I'm watching for my next turn, thinking it should be anytime now. My eyes are scanning every sign as I pass. And all of a sudden, there's Minix Road.

WHAT?!? I have just made the hugest circle in twenty minutes - twice the amount of time it should have taken me to get back to work! And all of this time and wasted gas to realize that I should have just turned left!

After a few minutes of reeling over this discovery, I'm thinking I sure have been on Fischer Road a long time. I wonder where my turn is...

Yes, as soon as I think I've found where I am and have gotten over my circle mistake, I realize I have no idea where I am. I'm coming up on a stoplight. There wasn't a stoplight on Fischer on the way there...WHERE IN THE WORLD AM I?

And then, like water in a desert, I see a familiar nursery sign. I've somehow gotten to Highway 34. I have no idea how, but I finally know where I am. Five minutes later, I'm back at work.

One thing Mic and I have refused to say is that Newnan was a mistake. It sure feels like one. It feels like turning around at the end of Minix, only to find ourselves back at Fischer by another road, wasting a lot of valuable time.

It's like we've come full circle. Our lives at this moment look very similar to the way they were when we first got married.

But I still wouldn't trade Minix Road. We passed Denver on the way. And somehow becoming familiar with Newnan has added to who we are today. We may not discover for a long time why we ended up on this "wrong road" that seemed to be beckoning us almost two years ago. We refuse to say those feelings were just bad pizza.

Let's just put it this way - at least the next time we come to the intersection of Minix and Fischer, we'll know to just turn left.