The White Rabbit

I almost missed my daughter’s doctor appointment yesterday. I had made notes, both mental and physical about the 4:00 appointment. Nonetheless I found myself driving frantically towards the office with wet hair at 4:07. I threw my phone at Lucy, 12, and asked her to find the office number and call. The phone clicked into blue tooth as it rang in the speakers in my car. The automated message answered with a load of information I didn’t need, the address, the hours, the covid-19 warning, that hasn’t been updated. Finally, I got the receptionist. I told her, we were running a few minutes late. She said, if you are more than 15 minutes late we will cancel the appointment automatically. I asked her if they’d taken a note of all the times we had been early, which is literally every other time, so we could borrow on that. She said no.

I hung up. The time was now 4:09 and I was stuck behind a car that clearly had no concept of right on red. So we waited at the light even though no cars were coming. I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming. That’s when I remembered the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date. No time to say Hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.”

How often in life do I feel like that rabbit? Of all the characters in literature, is he the one I want to relate to so well? Not really. I hate the feeling of being late. I think we all do. This wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. But maybe next time I can see myself as the crazy rabbit and try to slow down, breath and just accept that I am late instead of feeding into it.

We pulled into the parking lot at 4:13. Lucy ran inside, leaving the van door wide open. I closed it with the key fob as I dashed to the door. We made it inside with 1 minute to spare. I told the receptionist that I’d been asleep less than ten minutes ago, my hair still wet from a shower I’d been in 20 minutes ago. She was not amused or impressed at my ability to rally.