The fog

The Pearl River’s warm water met the cool October air causing dense fog over Jackson, Mississippi.  Cars commuting from every direction of the compass hit the gray wall of mist. First there were wrecks. And then severe delays. Shelby Jennings locked the brakes on her minivan, hoping to avoid the suddenly stopped mass of cars up ahead.

“#$%#$!”

She used a word that she hardly ever used and then said “Forgive me, God.” Her van came to a stop inches from the truck ahead of her.

The sun tried in vain to burn the fog off.  Her head felt much the same way. “Too much arguing and too little sleep will do that to you,” she thought.  She looked in the mirror at her bloodshot eyes.  After twenty-five years of marriage, the wheels had come off last night. “I just hope the kids didn’t hear it,” she said to herself aloud.

She talked to herself a lot these days. She was the only one who was listen.  She couldn’t trust her husband Rob with her feelings. And he was too self-centered to care if she did.  She knew he badmouthed her behind her back. Who could trust someone who did that?  He was supposed to be her #1 supporter.

She cursed again as she noticed her coffee all over the van’s carpeted floor mats.  “For better or worse. What a bunch of crap,”she thought. She was way too focused on the worse to ever admit there was still some “better.”

The Waterworks Curve, a bizarrely designed curvy section of I-55 that runs by the old Jackson water treatment plant, was a parking lot. She turned on the radio to hear a traffic report.  “Yes,” she thought sarcastically, “I know there is fog out there.  And yes, I know to be careful.” An 18-wheeler had crushed a Hyundai at the Pearl Street exit, her exit.  This was going to be a long wait.

“At least I know someone is having a worse day,” she thought uncaringly.

The wispy fog crept around her van like a prowling cat.  She could barely make out the lights of the truck ahead of her.  The thick gray cloak was much like her anger.  Anger that blanketed any redeeming good features about her husband.

He wasn’t perfect. That’s for sure.  Rob had committed a long list of trespasses against her that she held close to her heart.  She was 46, unforgiving and angry. He had completely tuned her out.  Now they were like two shopkeepers trying to run a business.  Their kids were their only connection.  Two bodies slept in the same bed but might as well have been 1,000 miles apart.

She hit the horn out of frustration — just not because of the traffic.

Shelby loved her husband. Rob was a good man.  A decent man.  And she knew that deep down he loved her.  The Great Recession had put so much strain on their marriage.  Financial strain can break the strongest bonds.

She just wanted to feel needed again. To feel special. To feel like she mattered.

Raising her hands up to her head, she began to cry. An ambulance squeezed by on the emergency lane; its siren waking her out of her pity party.

Wiping the mascara off of her face, she looked at the picture of her family taped to the van’s dashboard. Her kids were so handsome and beautiful.  Like a beautiful building that needed restoring, she looked at what she had built.  No, correct that. She and Rob had built.

Yes, the beautiful building known as her family needed restoring, not tearing down.

The sun began to burn through the fog.  Fingers of light came over the Pearl River as the traffic slowly started to move.  Shelby put the car in drive and eased forward. Forward in traffic. And forward with her life.

She came to the wreck site and saw the Jackson Police officer talking to the truck driver.  Over to the side, the paramedics were loading an elderly woman into the ambulance.  Her head was wrapped in bandages, but Shelby could see she was conscious.  “Life really could turn on a dime,” she thought as she headed into downtown.

She parked the car and sat for a moment. She thought about where she was in her life and took a deep breath.  When she exhaled, she would forgive Rob for all of his sins.  She took another breath and relaxed. Forgiveness wasn’t for him. It was for her. She felt the weight of anger leave her shoulders.

She grabbed her purse and her lunch and headed toward her office building.  The fog had mysteriously burned away by the time her hand opened the door.  What she saw made her burst into tears.

There, standing in the doorway, was a man with two-dozen roses.  He was older and handsome. Attached to arrangement was a balloon. On it read the words, “I am sorry.”

It was Rob.

While all was not repaired on the first day, Shelby and Rob spent the next 25 years remodeling what they had built together. They set an example that their kids later took into their marriages.  Joy replaced pain. Love replaced grief.

And on that morning commute, Shelby’s fog of anger burned away once and for all.