Learning to Drive in the Slow Lane

I miss the magical thinking of grief. That heady intensity of thought, the ability to see serendipity in all things, of having an excuse to let the little things slide because they don't really matter anymore. I realize that grief is really a prolonged state of change and magical thinking is a result of this change. And by magical thinking, what I really mean is growth. Spiritual. Emotional. Mental. Whatever way you slice it.Looking back on my life, I realize change was ever-present – traveling between parents on weekends, moving homes and changing schools frequently. To cope, I kept my friends constant and my family close. But eventually, I found that I needed frequent bouts of change in my life, or I grew restless. I remember my desperation during my adolescence to grow up and become an adult, someone in control of her own world, a control I now see was pure fantasy. When things were bad, I knew all I had to do was wait a while, and things would surely change. Sometimes I created my own change: I thought nothing of flying off to Europe or Australia on my own after high school and college.Grief was simply another life change I needed to adapt to, albeit, not a very fun one most of the time. I think now that my resilience came from knowing on some level, that like everything in my life so far, even grief was a stage, that entropy would eventually wash it into a new era. Our move to Seattle, of course was another version of this hunger for change, and now that I've been here for a while, I am conscious of this impulse to move life along.The down side of thriving on change: Impatience.On the Carter side of my family, we are all known for being speedy at whatever we do: my grandmother was a speedy quilter, my father, a speedy draftsman. As a project manager, I was speedy at getting things done. What you give up though in the quest for speed is the quality of your work, which project management taught me was a bad thing. I had to learn to slow down, check all my work carefully, proofread.Jim and I are now nearly two years (!) into our relationship. Many mornings we sit at my dining room table, each absorbed in our respective computer worlds, comfortable in our pattern, our easy rapport, our lack of desire to get anywhere, since we are exactly where we need to be.Jim has taught me many things about the value of slow, which is odd given he's a firefighter. Perhaps it's because he's a firefighter. Ever the speed queen, I mostly drive like a bat out of hell, but now I drive in the slow lane (as much as it sometimes kills me) after Jim told me that almost every highway accident he attends as a firefighter occurs in the fast lane, a place where it's impossible to swerve to the shoulder to avoid things coming at you, often from the opposite direction.He can run long distances, not because he sprints, but because he uses the slow and steady tortoise method. Slow and steady has become a metaphor for our relationship in a way, but I find myself sometimes chafing, my desire for speed and change an opiate.My relationship with Arron was filled with the milestones of a young marriage: moving in together, marriage, living abroad, buying a house, children. There was always a big change around the corner to keep things exciting. A later-in-life relationship has fewer milestones through which to navigate, through which to grow together, to test limits and boundaries within the other. I find myself wondering about the next big change that Jim and I might undertake together - moving in? marriage? buying a house? Travel? And I have to stop myself.Being adaptable to change served me well in overcoming loss, but I still need to work at keeping my inner Roadrunner in check – to not push time and to remember to allow those quiet moments at the dining room table to happen, content in the knowledge that change will come as surely as entropy is an inevitable life-force.Magical thinking in the post-grief era.PS: As my New Year's Resolution, I have decided to join International Institute of Not Doing Much. At least I might, after I take my time thinking about it for a while.