Car meets curb and we meet friends

Once upon a time, Tommy and Lauren set out in their friend Kev's car to visit Northland. Several hours into the drive, that car met a curb, and jumped right over it in excitement. Which, as Lauren and Tommy now know, is not good for either tie rods or drive shafts. Things seemed likely to get a bit pathetic. But who should happen along at that moment but an ex-pat American couple with a swanky, Victorian-style B&B overlooking the sea. "Come stay with us," they said, "and we'll give you food and a room you could never in your life hope to afford in exchange for painting walls in our new house." And so Lauren and Tommy got to experience the flashest, most unexpected WWOOF stay imaginable while their car got a whole new set of parts.

There's another way to tell that story, which would involve some supernatural narrative structuring and the drawing of some divine-type conclusions. Our hosts put forward the idea that the whole ordeal was possibly "meant to be." And I can't deny that there is something that feels extra-coincidental about it all: the timing of it, our increased ability to accept and let go at this stage in the trip, our hosts' incredible generosity. But I also feel a sort of postcolonial, postmodern inhibition about implying that we were somehow singled out by the universe for special treatment. I feel nervous about making a religion out of being fortunate, overextrapolating from being incredibly lucky. In equal measure I desire and fear to construct universal principles from the experience of being taken care of. Is it possible to talk about blessings without talking about their opposite? Not curses, necessarily, but even the absence of good and comfort and care? Why me, yes, and also why not someone else?

And so, since that particular question seems unlikely to resolve itself anytime soon, having kept many quicker and wiser minds awake for centuries already, for now I'll stick with the more straightforward story and allow you to come to your own conclusions. We had an accident that could have been much worse. We were taken in by a lovely family and got to stay in this house...

in this room...

with this view...

and we were filled with gratitude and wonder.