Clockwise

I always start my hula hoop in a counterclockwise revolution because it comes more naturally, and this morning was no different.  I like going left.  At one point, I made a mental note to myself to switch directions at the start of the next song.  As I started the hoop going right, the word “clockwise” came into my head and I imagined a clock with its numbers in a circle around me, just as the iPod on random shuffle chose to play “Clockface”, my favorite piece on the Drum Devils CD (featuring my husband George!).  “Clockface” features idiophones only and no membranophones. The piece begins with slow, sonorous bells ringing, appropriate for a Sunday morning.  I maintained the clockwise direction through most of my workout, in tribute to this pleasing synchronicity. 

A short while later, when I paid for groceries at Trader Joe’s, the card reader displayed the usual question about whether I would like “cash back”.  I hesitated, knowing I had spent my last two dollar coins on a snow cone for Daniel the day before, and I always like to have some small amount of cash in my pocket. Illogically, I decided instead that I would stop at the Credit Union ATM on Eisenhower on the way back to Daniel’s baseball practice, and so selected “No”.   On the way out with my bags I thought to myself, “That was silly---it’s the same money; I’ve just added another errand to my day.” 

Just as I made the right turn into the Credit Union, a large van coming from the other direction sped up and got in ahead of me, and I thought “Oh, he’s in a hurry, he wants to get to the machine first”.  But then the van’s driver pulled over to the side and allowed me to go first, pulling up behind me just as I was collecting the cash and receipt.  Okay.

As turned right out of Credit Union and continued toward the ball field, an unexpected thing happened: about 20 feet in front of me, a mother duck and 9 or 10 tiny ducklings launched themselves off the curb into my lane.  I came to a halt and waited for them to make their waddling way across the seemingly immense two lanes, apprehensive that the driver pulling up behind me would not see the situation and start leaning on her horn, or worse, drive around me and collide directly with the duck family.  But nobody was coming the other way; the driver behind me must have seen the ducks too, and waited patiently. The ducklings made it to the other side, safe from harm at least for that day and that moment.  As I continued my journey, a lump developed in my throat. 

When the ducks appeared before me, it felt emblematic, like a dreamed event with a meaning inside.  It was as if that chance to be present, to be kind, that opportunity to notice and make a place for those small creatures in this busy world, had been engineered.  A sequence had been set into motion, possibly as early as the right turning of my hula hoop:  I instinctively didn’t do the obvious and easy thing when prompted for cash back.  I was on the clockwise part of my journey, returning, making all right turns.  Even the odd example of the van getting in ahead of me and then stopping to make way for me seemed to fit into the chain.  It felt, if not quite scripted, compelled---a sequence of right choices and right turns that would culminate perfectly into my being right there when the ducklings and their mother tumbled into the roadway.