Miracle at the DMV
Half a decade ago, I walked into the DMV as if the red sea was parting. I was in downtown Boston. Middle of the work day. Bone-cold deep winter. Ice-grey sky above me.
I wasn’t even supposed to be there: just a few months before, I had been living in Colorado beneath red rock slabs in a home with an alleyway garden that I grew garlic in each winter. This year, there was no garlic burrowed in frozen soil waiting for the emergence of spring. After ending up in the hospital for a mysterious infection that I later learned to by Lyme disease, I crawled into my red Subaru and drove across the country back to my family, taking the high route through dark Canadian forests.
It was a long drive. I hoped to be a temporary resident in my sun-less home state, like the migratory geese who hissed at me as I made the daily pilgrimage to the hospital I was born in, sitting in sterile rooms under fluorescent lights as each doctor told me there was nothing they could do to help.
Weeks turned to months. I tried everything I could to heal. I sat in an armchair trying to read medical textbooks to find answers, my vision milky and faint, a side effect that terrified me: words nearly indecipherable, just black shapes floating on a white page. Winter came. My out-of-state license would soon expire. I signed up for the only 20-minute slot left for weeks at the closest DMV. We’ve all been here: the dread of bureaucracy awaiting us.
Outside the building, there were red poles lined up to keep people waiting in a line, at least I presumed that’s what they were for, because no one was there. I walked inside. Took the elevator up several floors. Walked through empty hallways. At this point, it felt like something was off: Where was everyone? I had gotten the last time slot of many, for weeks. This was the DMV. Purgatory of lines and miserable people expected.
At the end of an empty hallway, I saw a red electronic sign over the door with a number on it glowing: 17. Beyond the door were dozens of booths with DMV employees, silently waiting. A couple of customers were there. I assumed I needed to find booth 17, so I stepped in and zigzagged through the aisles.
What happens next goes by many names: Call it extreme luck. Statistically improbable chance encounter. Serendipity. Fate. Divine intervention. Miracle. It happens to all of us. Right place, right time.
I’ll keep the story brief. At booth 17 was Stephanie. She asked why I was changing my license plates to Massachusetts; I quietly and hesitantly explained my illness. The I asked her about her life, which I tend to do when I’m around people. She excitedly launched into explaining how she ran her own business selling nontoxic Black haircare products, a project that began to help her two daughters’ natural curls and create an alternative from the very unregulated industry that disproportionately harms the Black community. She told me she was a traditional Haitian herbalist, learning remedies that had been passed down through her family for generations. And not only that: She told me she had tea that would heal my body.
She handed me my new license plates. And then slid her business card across the counter between us. A few weeks later, we met at a café. She gave me two Haitian tea blends. You may question my sanity, but I trusted her—and I had few other options at that point. When you’re sick, you’re in a constant plea with the universe for any help at all.
I followed her instructions to boil the soursop and bitterleaf in a pot on the stove, steep the dried herbs, and drink the murky water, and all I can say is: I could feel the bacteria in my body react, just like antibiotics.
Duly trained in the scientific method, I spent hours researching the herbs and reading peer-reviewed articles on their efficacy. It turns out they had strong anti-malarial properties…so it wouldn’t be a stretch they had anti-lyme properties, too.
Imagine my wonder. Imagine the possibility of something like this even happening. It’s not that it cured me instantly; it was just a horizon line shifting. An opening into new ways of looking at the world. More often than not, we close ourselves off to chance encounters. We view our lives in both passive and linear ways: Do this. Then this. Then this. Stay in line. Follow these directions. Complete these assignments.
We think life happens to us, but I think the reverse is true: We make our life happen. We either open up, or we don’t. We either talk to the angel at booth 17 in the DMV, or we don’t. We either decide to apply to that school, take that job, make that change—or we don’t. The choice is yours. And the path is never what you expected it to be, but always exactly as it should be. Just like how the geese know their way each winter, an arrow of wings parting the clouds on their way from here to there.
