He Said What?: Women Write About Moments When Everything Changed by Victoria Zackheim

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In the mid-eighties, I flew to London to attend a friend's wedding. This was my first foreign-land trip alone, having been through a divorce several years earlier. The morning after the wedding, I checked out of the hotel and picked up a rental car. (When asked by incredulous friends if I understood that the Brits drove on the "other" side of the road, I smiled. Being left-handed, their mode of driving felt natural to me!) Confident that I could do this, yet nervous to be heading away from friends alone and without hotel reservations, I drove out of the agency and followed road signs toward the highway. 

Safely on the autoroute, I picked up speed and drove north toward the Lake District. After highschool and college English classes, and two well-worn Norton anthologies to prove it, I wanted to see the villages of the poets.  I was several hours out of London when I decided to exit the highway and do a little exploring.  I found myself on a country road barely wide enough for one mid-sized car. Driving slowly around many blind curves, I saw in the distance, waving above towering wheatfields, a flurry of bright yellow objects.

Slowing even more, I came around another curve and stopped. Before me was an Indian family: father, mother, grandparents, children. The men wore white suits of trousers and shirts, the women were in saris of magnificent colors, flowing silks, a stark contrast to the pale wheat. The children, too, were clothed in loose-flowing and colorful outfits. What added to this pallette were the long poles held by all of them...poles topped by lemon-colored butterfly nets.

I finally inched along, and we waved to one another as I passed.  I remember thinking how joyful they seemed, this family out for a butterly walk. I returned to the highway and continued north. It was several minutes before I realized that I was crying. At first I believed that I was crying for the marriage and family life I once believed I would have, but then it struck me: I was crying because, for the first time in my life, I was experiencing what it felt to be free. Free of stress, free of family responsibility, free to create a new life. Looking back, it would be easy to credit the butterflies, but in truth it was the nets, the way they waved above the wheatfields and colored the landscape. And that joyful Indian family celebrating life on an isolated country road in England.