I injured my foot in a cold yoga studio. Never take a class that involves stretching in a cold room. In fact, if ever you are cold and you drop your pencil, don’t bend over and pick it up. Leave it there until spring. Maybe it wasn’t the cold, but the class that injured me: Ashtanga Yoga. That’s Sanskrit for “a thousand downward dogs until you snap”.
When I walk out of there, I don’t realize I am injured. I think the taut muscles under the ball of my foot just need to be stretched and massaged. I stretch them, while soaking in a hot bath, by forcefully bending my toes toward my ankle. This is what it feels like to pull apart thick strands of taffy.
Although it doesn’t hurt, I know this isn’t good because the next day I can’t put weight on my foot. The next two months, I walk around in a rigid boot to avoid any more taffy stretching.
I avoid walking, because the boot puts my hips out of alignment, causing a new injury above that, and a new injury above that, turning me into a lame fixer upper. The aches and pains house of blues that Jack built. To avoid further injury, I pull into a parking lot at Target or the grocery and pray for “a Jesus parking spot.”
A Jesus parking spot is a vacant spot closest to the door that isn’t marked “handicapped”. You only ask for a Jesus parking spot if you really, really, really need one. I never abuse that rule and whenever I ask for a Jesus parking spot I get one. It is amazing.
Sometimes I pull into a parking lot, and I don’t find a Jesus parking spot. I just tell myself, someone else needed it more. Thank God I’m not worse off than me.
Last Saturday was a gorgeous day. Vincent begged me to take him to the zoo. We pull into the parking lot, a sea of cars, and I say, “Wow, looks like a lot of people had the idea to come to the zoo today.”
He corrected me. “Looks like a lot of peoples’ kids had the idea to come to the zoo today. A lot of kids had a good idea.”
“Where are we going to park, a mile away??”
We meet eyes in the rearview mirror and Vincent says hesitantly, aware his suggestion is quite a long shot: “a Jesus parking spot?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Can’t hurt to try, right?”
We drive passed rows and rows of minivans, a bumper crop of minivans, to the very last row, closest to the ticket booth. All the way down the last row, on the left and right, are filled handicap parking spots. But at the end of the row, where I stop and decide if I’m going to go up and down every row or straight to the back, I see, on my immediate left, a vacancy!
“Oh my God! Vincent! A Jesus parking spot!”
I cannot believe it. I can’t contain my excuberance. I want to do a happy dance like you won’t believe. There is a family getting into the minivan directly in front of me. The husband is on the cell phone outside the van. The wife is in the passenger seat, facing me. The two boys in the back are spent.
I explain to the wife why I’m so thrilled. I know, I know. Hard to imagine. Me, just walking up to a total stranger, and striking up a conversation.
She transcends her thick accent and high-fives me. What culture barrier? She high-freakin-fives me! And says, when our hands smack together, “Praise the Lord!”
To which I shake my head and think only in the Midwest.
As her husband backs up their minivan, and her kids are whining, she yells out her window: “You are going to be really glad you have a Jesus parking spot on your way out!”
She was right.
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