Just the next few feet
Earlier in the day, I hadn't given much thought to the road.
Skyline Boulevard (or just Skyline, as we like to say) winds for miles along the ridge of Portland’s West Hills. On one side, the land drops into Forest Park, a vast wilderness of towering Douglas firs, old maples, trails, and woodland creatures — all within our city limits. On the other, it slopes toward the Tualatin Valley and the Coast Range beyond.
The road is full of blind curves, unexpected speed bumps, and potholes of various sizes. And because it sits so high above the city, it’s one of the first places to ice over in winter or disappear beneath a blanket of fog.
I believe it was late fall, or perhaps early winter. My middle child was a toddler, my daughter a few years older, and my youngest wasn’t even born. I’m not sure where we’d been that afternoon. The pediatrician? Preschool? Or maybe the grocery store? But I remember it was getting dark when we headed home.
As we turned onto Skyline, it felt like one minute we were in the bustle of the city with the last light from the setting sun, and the next minute, we were alone in the dark, enveloped by a fog so thick I could barely see a foot in front of my headlights.
The fog lights on my car only made the visibility worse.
I’ve driven Skyline so many times in the decades since that I know its curves by heart. Where the bumps show up and where to avoid the bigger potholes. But back then, the road was unfamiliar. I couldn’t anticipate the next turn or even how much farther we had to go.
I remember everything being so quiet except for my heartbeat. It was as if my children instinctively knew to stay hushed. I gripped the wheel at 10 and 2, and despite feeling disoriented by the fog, I stared at that yellow line stretching a foot in front of my left bumper and just followed it.
And if I’d had a cell phone with me, it would've been a simple flip phone. No fancy GPS. No beacon for emergency services should we end up in the ditch.
One of my favorite books on writing is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Early in the book, she shares a quote by novelist E. L. Doctorow:
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
Lamott goes on to suggest that this is true of life as well. We don’t have to see the entire journey ahead of us. Just the next two or three feet.
Of all the stages of life I’ve navigated, I think midlife has been the hardest to see even a few feet ahead. I've left the defined paths of school, the beginnings of a career, and the familiar rhythm of raising kids. Now I’m in this wide-open space of midlife, trying to figure out what comes next.
And like so many of us doing the multiple-generation juggle, just when I decide to head in a particular direction, something pulls me off course.
But I keep moving forward. Sometimes only a foot at a time.
During that treacherous drive down Skyline, I kept thinking about Doctorow’s quote. I couldn’t see where the road was taking us, but I knew enough to follow that yellow line until the next few feet came into view. And I trusted myself to spot the road I needed to turn down to get home.
Eventually, I pulled into the safety of my garage, closed the door behind me, and went inside. My kiddos ran off like nothing had happened. As for me, it took a few hours for my heartbeat to settle down.
Nowadays, whenever I'm working toward something important to me, whether a creative endeavor, something with work, my physical well-being, or even organizing my vast Photos catalog, I think back to that drive.
I can imagine how I’d like things to turn out. I can make plans and spreadsheets. But I can’t know what lies around the next bend. None of us can.
Sometimes all we can do is move forward a few feet in the direction of something that matters to us, trusting that we’ll figure out the next few feet when we get there.
Maybe we’ll arrive exactly where we’d hoped. Maybe somewhere even better.
Or maybe we’ll simply pull safely into our garage.
Cheers,
Carrie
The more life I live, the more I understand how precious our time is. What even a few minutes is worth. It doesn't go unnoticed that you spend some of your day here with me. Thank you for letting me be a small part of it. I hope you always leave with something meaningful.🤍