Glass, Glass, Everywhere

The gardens where my friends live—Takaka, NZ

I woke this morning at 2am to the sound of a dog losing her mind. The sound began in my dream, and I shut it out. I awoke slowly to realize that the dog barking was not imaginary, but right outside my door, the one I am looking after. I told the hedgehog in my mind to go away. It was either a hedgehog or an intruder. Either option would involve me getting up to investigate, and I was not really thrilled with meeting either culprit in the cold night. I willed the barking to stop. It did. And then it started again. And again. I threw off the blankets and grabbed the torch, which in this case, is just a drill with a light where a drill bit should be.

It was a hedgehog. My experience with hedgehogs involves them lying mostly dead on the side of the road, or maybe scurrying toward the underbrush away from the footpath. So I was not entirely sure how this encounter would go. Do they move quickly? I had moved a cockroach from the curtain to the outdoors the day before successfully, so maybe this interaction would also not end in the creature jumping on me in retaliation. My foggy mind was optimistic. I picked up the designated hedgehog bucket and garden rake to gather this little hobbler up and away. He didn’t move that much, just waddled this way and that. I scooped him up, holding the bucket at an angle, just in case he decided now was the time to practice his audition for hedgehog high jump. Bare feet on the cold driveway, I wondered about the appropriate distance to deposit this hedgehog from the dog. I plopped him toward the end of the driveway, watching my back as I walked away. He did not decide to compete in the 400-meter dash at this time, for which I was thankful. I mumbled goodnight to the dog, mustering as much grace as I could will into my voice, before locking the door and burrowing back under the blankets. I was cold.

I am currently housesitting in Richmond, which is near Nelson, located at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. The house sitters I am working for have been incredibly kind—they got me chocolate and let me use their bike (an incredible gift, both because I don’t have a car, and I just like biking). They’ve been very hospitable, especially as I sort my car situation out. For those who do not know, here is the story. Grab a cup of tea, and buckle in.

It is a Saturday, a little after 8am. I am housesitting for two small dogs, a few fish, and an assortment of chickens, whose names have been all listed out—with visual descriptions—in a three page note that the owner left for me. I am hanging up my laundry in the backyard, getting ready for a trip to the bakery. There is a workshop on food forests today, and I am picking up a loaf of bread to share with friends for lunch. I am excited and realize that I am mostly entirely out of my depth with this subject. I am going to be educated, and I can’t wait. As I hang a red sweater up, I hear the sound of a truck on the road. I pause briefly, the thought flitting across my mind that my car could have been hit, but it is likely nothing. The truck probably just went over a bump or something. I head back inside, noticing the fish eating something along the tank’s glass. Saying goodbye to the dogs, I grab my keys and head to the street. Opening the gate, I notice a piece of black plastic on the ground. I check my roadside rearview mirror—it is still intact, so it should be good to go, right? A man is standing on the grass, and he asks me, “Is this your car?” That is not a question you want to hear.

I walk around to the other side of my car. All three windows are shattered, and the upper frame of the car has been torn and dented. There is glass everywhere. I go into crisis mode, which means shutting down all emotions, and have a proper talk with the driver, who is also trying to keep it together. Turns out that the back door of the truck wasn’t latched properly, so it came undone and swung into my vehicle. We wait for two hours for three more men from this trucking company to arrive, and we stand around my car. One of them says, “That’s a lot of glass.” Another says, “In your home.”  That’s helpful, yes, thank you. Astute observations, here. After insurance and contact details are exchanged, two of them leave. The other two get me tape, black trash bags, a broom, a hazard vest, gloves, and a coffee. They sweep a bit of the glass up from the street and hand me a coffee as an offer of peace. I accept gratefully and set to work at sweeping and cleaning up the glass that has spread everywhere for the next six hours. In backpacks, in clothes, in food, in boxes, in seats, in the dash. My friends stop by and give me supporting hugs, which breaks down the wall of emotion, and they tell me it’s okay to cry. I call my parents later, and more tears are shed. Everyone who sees the car tells me it won’t get fixed.

The next week consisted of a lot of phone calls to the trucking company and an insurance company who seemed determined to not even give me a claim number until a week after the incident, a bike ride to the trucking company to get some answers, a lift from that company to a town an hour and half away (Neil, the driver, told me it was time to get my mean voice out), the repeated question of “So what is the damage to your vehicle?” every time I got in touch with insurance, that it would take 3-5 business days to get the car assessed, only after it gets towed, the non-committal agreement that they will reimburse me for a rental car, and on and on. It’s been two weeks.

My most recent conversation with insurance involved me sitting with a headache on a park bench in downtown Nelson. The insurance agent pauses after asking me where my car was towed to—I don’t know, I wasn’t told—and then a blank space while she checks to see if it has been assessed, three days after it has been towed. She responds that no one has looked at it. This is when the tears pool, and I pinch the bridge of my nose, and we go through the motions again, where I push for more answers, for more urgency, for anything. And I am met with factual answers and practiced diplomacy. There is, of course, nothing to do but wait.

Just now, in the middle of writing this, I found a mostly dead mouse in the living room. The sun is shining. A friend of mine just pr’d in a marathon. My sister is applying for a scholarship and asked me to proofread her submission. I call my parents nearly every day. In five days, I could be homeless, carless, jobless again. But I want to finish this long post with a quick story, maybe just to bring peace to both of us, yeah?

Last week, I very quickly found out I had to drive an hour and a half north to get my belongings out of my car so it could be towed. I messaged a friend, Andi, who has been so supportive, that I was coming up for the day. She immediately invited me for fish and chips and offered to help. After I had cleaned out my car—a process that took less than an hour—I unceremoniously said goodbye to Mav and hopped in my car to see the beach and then go for a hike. As I was about to park at the trailhead, my phone rang. The towing company was ready to pick my car up and needed the keys. So I turned around, plopped the keys on the back tire, and drove away. Andi texted me to say that the plan for fish and chips had changed, the beautiful little community that I had met two weeks ago asked me to join them for burritos. I walked around the peaceful gardens as the sky turned the most magnificent shades of blue and pink, and my friends came and joined me. We built a fire and ate the burritos under the quickly darkening starry sky. I hugged them and said goodbye, beginning my drive back over the Takaka hill.

I have been listening to “My Life Flows On” on repeat the last two days. And while my often-leaking eyes the past few days may show a different story than “No storm can shake my inmost calm,” the line that sticks out to me the most is, “Since Love is Lord over heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?” The past two weeks have not been a walk in the park, and it has been annoying and difficult to navigate this mostly alone. And Love is Lord. I am exhausted and never want to hear “What was the damage to your car?” again. “All things are mine, since I am his.” As a friend at church told me today, hopefully something this week miraculously drops out of the sky. Who knows. The absurd joy of having no control is that you continually are surprised by what happens. Like midnight hedgehogs. And I’d like to order a couple boring weeks now, please.