Chianti Traffic
I’ve never understood people who claim that a deer hit their car. It’s a carefully worded out, right? Like I didn’t steal this bag of M&Ms; they just fell into my pocket on the way out of the store sort of thing.
A deer hit your car…
“So, you hit a deer?” I’d say.
“No!” they’d insist. “The deer hit us. The deer hit our car.”
“Sure.”
“There was nothing we could do! It was just…there. All of a sudden.”
“Sure, it was,” I’d nod. “You don’t have to convince me. I’m not your insurance agent.” A beat, then: “So, you hit a deer.”
*
The roads of the Tuscan countryside are not unlike a wayward spaghetti noodle escaping across the kitchen floor: twisting, always twisting, piled up in no discernible direction, and slippery when wet. It takes you a long time to get a handle on things—and even then, you have to go slowly, lest it all slip through your fingers.
All the same, it’s hard to get from one winery to the next without a car. So, tucked in our Spanish CUPRA, we wound up and down one road after another, passing through small towns and groves of tall, pointed cypress. We rolled along hills dotted with vineyards and sunflowers and olive trees.
And I kept my hands glued to the wheel, in what felt like one, long turn.
It was not a relaxing drive: not for me and certainly not for the poor locals who got stuck driving behind me. But it was beautiful. And we stumbled upon plenty of worthwhile wine.
We also stumbled upon some Italian wildlife. Or, rather, it stumbled upon us.
I swear.
*
It’s a distinct moment. Alli had just commented on a tiny Italian town—one of those We’ve got a café and a church and maybe a solitary home and not much else kind of towns. We’d just driven past it, though it was already out of sight as we had yet another hill to turn down.
“That was so cute!” she said. “Maybe we can go back later.”
I hadn’t seen it—not really—my eyes dutifully bound to the unscrupulous road before me. There was a rather large truck barreling down behind us, and I was trying to keep the driver as unantagonized as possible. There was never much room to pass on the left.
The view, though, was still beautiful. As we wound down the hill, you could see all of Tuscany opening up before us. The road itself was lined with tall, golden grass. We had the impression of being both intimately grounded in the Italian countryside while also being able to see up and over and into the future, to our next destination.
And then a deer charged out of the misleading grass and banged into the car.
*
My youngest daughter wanted to play peek-a-boo the other day. The rules were a bit fuzzy.
She covers her eyes, I cover mine and then we both yell “PEEK-A-BOO” at more or less the same time. We do this for about five minutes. And then, with little rhyme or reason, she declares: “I win!”
“You can’t win peek-a-boo,” I say. “It’s not that kind of game.”
She shrugs. “I’m the winner.”
Then she jumps off my lap and runs into the kitchen leaving me to wonder how a person wins at a game that simply involves opening your eyes.
*
The sound of a wild animal lunging into your car door is a loud one—at least, for me on the driver’s side. Alli didn’t hear it, though she heard my scream, the profanity that tumbled out of my pirate mouth. The deer, too, was displeased. It somehow spent a second or two running alongside the car, its head tucked just behind the rearview mirror.
And I swear it was staring at me. As if to say: “C’mon dude. Get out of the way.”
I accelerated and the deer veered back into the tall grass and, well, happy ending. In our perpetual state of turning, we got the chance to drive by that very same deer as it stood, glaring at us. There was no damage to the car, the truck behind us stayed that way rather than in our trunk. And we didn’t plummet off the side of the mountain.
Win-win.
I will say I was a bit grumpier than usual at the next winery. Another guest there was remarking on how crazy the experience of driving in Tuscany felt. Our host laughed and said, “We call you guys ‘Chianti Traffic.’ We always know when we’re behind a tourist—so slow on those turns!”
I said nothing. I kept playing the deer scenario over and over in my mind. It could have gone bad a million different ways. There were so many little twists and turns that story might have taken to end differently. But it didn’t. It went the one best way.
Twisting, turning—but we got where we were going all the same.
And another thing:
As part of this year’s “31 Days with St. Ignatius” campaign, I wrote about finding God in pop culture for IgnatianSpirituality.com. Give it a read!
This week’s “Now Discern This” ends my arc on Ignatian storytelling. Check it out.