Preferred Parking: Seeking Gratitude

David was incandescent with some adventure, but he didn’t tell me where we were going until he drove straight through the lake access and out onto the ice road of Cathedral Lake.*

“Oh shit!” I unbuckled my seatbelt and rolled down my window. “David, you can’t drive to the islands. Ice around islands can be weak.”

“This road goes almost there! I found it while you were at work. I want you to see the islands and the cabin. And I’ve spent my whole life going to the Island, but I’ve never seen it in the winter.”

He was handsome, thoughtful, and persuasive. But he’d also led a life of swashbuckling adventures, including (but not limited to) flying helicopters for the Army and oil companies. “David, I know a guy who went through the ice near an island out here—and he was on skis. You can’t drive to The Island!”

“We’ll get close!”

We’d only been dating a few months but I knew he’d survived tumbling two stories to a cobblestone street in Germany when he was five. When he was 18, he was at the helm of a sailboat in the middle of the night when a wave washed him into the ocean. Watching the boat skim away, no one aware he was overboard, he flailed his arm and just happened to catch a rope trailing behind the boat. He survived being a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam, engine malfunctions in his helicopters, and misdiagnosed Lyme’s disease. The man was unsinkable. But was I?

“Open the back windows so the dogs can get out if we go through.” I wasn’t asking. My fear of ice isn’t rational. I know this. At that moment I didn’t care.

By the time he left the ice road and gunned the engine through the snow I was mostly silent with fear. Or maybe I was caught up in the adventure. Or maybe I was nagging him and clutching the door handle, ready to bail. I don’t remember. David stopped the truck finally and I was relieved to go on wading in our boots. His dog Quid and my dog Mantis were happier too. The snow wasn’t very deep yet. And the day was a lovely winter day in northeastern Minnesota—sunny and in the above-zero twenties. The dogs stitched their way across the expanses as David stitched together summer memories with the novelty of seeing his family islands in snow and ice.

We stood in the screen porch of the cabin his extended family has shared for three generations, looking out at one of the loveliest spots I’d ever seen on Cathedral Lake, a close grouping of a few islands, one severed in two by the power of ice. David hugged me to his side. “Now this is Preferred Parking.” He yelled, “Thank You!”

I smiled. He wasn’t thanking me. This was his Preferred Parking protocol. When pulling into a parking lot, David looked for and found great parking spots. It might be nearer an entrance than even handicapped spaces or it might be shaded when he needed to leave Quid in the truck. But as he pulled into it, he followed two rules: 1. Notice you have preferred parking 2. Say thank You!

I usually park in the far reaches of a lot. Unless subzero temperatures and an arctic wind make walking unattractive, I appreciate a few extra steps. In truth, I’m lousy at staying between those painted lines. I attribute it to lack of practice. In winter, the lines in most of our small-town parking lots disappear beneath packed snow. So, it’s the outer spaces for me in summer. David’s quest for prime parking was wasted on me until I comprehended the arthritis pain in his feet.

 And I understood that his Preferred Parking wasn’t limited to actual vehicle parking.

He looked for and found many prime ‘places’ in his life. David was homeless for a time as misdiagnosed Lyme’s Disease and PTSD ravaged his body and mind. He was grateful for two men who allowed him to live in their barn for months. He showed me the barn; it had holes in the roof and the walls. He suspended a Conestoga wagon bed from a beam and created a warm nest inside it. The bed rocked from wind coursing through the barn and that delighted him. It was Preferred Parking.

 And then after his sisters helped him file for a service-connected disability, he owned a small quirky A-frame. Locals called it The Birdhouse because it sat on a bluff overlooking a broad flood plain. With his pilot’s eyes, David noticed that it was at a point of many convergences—rivers, railroads, and flight patterns both for birds and aircraft. He whispered, yelled, and hummed Thank You many, many times for that place.

The winter after our first traipse out to The Island, he bought an 800 square-feet cabin on Cathedral Lake. It came with an outhouse, an above ground water system, and a small woodstove. In other words, living there in the winter required some work: keeping the stove lit and stoked, water hauled, and hurried trips to an icy outhouse. In summer, keeping his boats afloat in the swampy bay wasn’t easy either. And yet, he fed squirrels, birds, and chipmunks generously as their antics added to the charms of his space. Red winged blackbirds and great blue herons loved the cattails and mucky water. And the screen porch was a sanctuary.  David was soft-spoken, so I was startled whenever he yelled “Beautiful!” which was a wonderful way of both acknowledging a gift and saying thank You.

Preferred Parking wasn’t limited to homes or even to physical spaces. He celebrated people and experiences. He celebrated family members, neighbors, and people most of us would label ‘characters’. Being part of their lives was Preferred Parking to him. He noticed the gifts of many people and said thank you, often with tangible support. He helped some elderly women sky dance together from their wheelchairs with kites. He helped an isolated woman break free from hoarding by rallying neighbors and her family to help clean out her home-and reconnected her to community in the process.

 He helped me reconnect with some family members and helped me relocate my parents to my hometown. He delighted in bringing together the talents and needs of one person with complementary needs and talents of another.

I was a character he scooped up and carried along for the last four years of his dear life. Being included in his capacious heart was my own Preferred Parking. I regret how long it took me to embrace and celebrate my prime location there. We broke up once because he sensed I wasn’t as committed to him as he was to me. I finally reconciled the narrow expectations in my head with the yearning in my heart and we got back together. Hanging out with David was a wild ride. Like gunning off an ice road onto untested ice. But time and again we found Preferred Parking and reasons to say “Thank You!”

David’s been gone almost eight years, but my daughter says “Thank You!” whenever she pulls into a prime parking space. We laugh together and then climb out to unload her precious little girls from their car seats.

And now that I know to look for it, my life is awash in Preferred Parking. When my four-year-old granddaughter asks for a snuggle, when my two-year-old  granddaughter wraps her tiny arms around my neck, I celebrate and say thank You.

Preferred Parking is the P in my Love With Roots gratitude alphabet. What starts with P in your gratitude list?

*Lake names have been changed to protect their identity

Photos from author’s collection: David on Cathedral Lake