The Husband and I returned yesterday from a weekend full of fits and starts. We flew northeast for his friend’s wedding, and the trip kicked off with a 72-mile trip that took three and a half hours. As we drove from New York to Connecticut, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, willing myself not to puke all over our rented Impala or the highways of Stamford and New Haven. When we arrived at our predestined Holiday Inn Express, I’ve never been happier to set my feet down on steaming black asphalt.

Car trips and I do not mix. Neither do traffic and I, or uncertainty and I, or waiting and I, or lack-of-control and I. I am the oil to this complications-filled world’s water. What can ever be done?

The heat wave that has been plaguing the Northeast was just beginning to lift, but the lift was slow and we spent most of the weekend in varying stages of discomfort, sweat a constant companion. Only among privileged first-world citizens would such problems even be noticed, but we made the best of it like the troupers we are, pausing to appreciate both the Atlantic horizon and the crack-shaped pants-sweat of the guy in front of us at the airport. I mingled and laughed as a hot breeze blew in from the yacht club’s harbor, my feet aching in high heels. I guzzled cold drinks from fine stemware even as perspiration threatened my foundation’s matte finish. TH and I threw our belongings back into our bags as the luxury hotel relocated us to an upgraded room with working air conditioning. We sat on chairs in the sky, smiling though delayed. We put up with this kind of stuff all weekend long, and I for one didn’t complain once.

Right.

From the dead center of a “difficult” situation, it’s so much easier to focus on the sweat trickling through crevices than to see the ways in which I am kept, held, provided for. There were so many moments of uncertainty: will we ever get out of this traffic? Will we ever get off this bus and to the party? Will this plane ever take off and, if it does, will it land in time for us to pick The Kid up from daycare before they call Child Services?

Will the test results be good? Will I ever have a child? Will the remission last? Will this marriage work out? Will I keep my job?

The questions bombarded me as all around, answers abounded dressed as mundane moments. Blessings masquerading as the ordinary. The cupcakes consumed overlooking Rock Center; the lilting accents of foreign friends who use words like cinema and lovely and remind me of how beautiful language can be. The memories shared over patio tables and bottles of wine and knowing smiles as new ones are made. The news of a baby boy as I head toward my own, who drops his treasured puzzle piece when he sees us and comes running. The vows taken that remind us of ours, three years and forever old, and the foundation upon which they were made. That foundation, which remains regardless of delays and weather and my own ill temper. At any given moment, it seems there are more questions than answers. And yet I sit here in our home, one man at his office and one boy on his cot, and I know that even though some days it feels that all I’m armed with is hand sanitizer and good intentions, I have so much more.

TH rented our car from a one-off shop in Queens that an online customer reviewed as “sketchy, but it all worked out in the end.” Kind of like our weekend. Kind of like life. The sun sets one day on the west side of Manhattan and I watch the streets turn golden in its glow; the next I see it peeking through the trees outside TK’s window as we tell him good night. No matter how far we feel from home, we are always there.