He was the proverbial stick—
or the rear right wheel of his car was—
the rainy night of his 82nd birthday
when he drove out to my late mother’s
house by the lake to haul bags of her
clothes 20 miles to the thrift store I love.

We thought he’d left when he came
back in the house, where my sister
and I were bagging shoes—well-used
tennies, no; serviceable pumps, yes—
saying, “I’m stuck.” And we looked up
from big garbage bags of heels
and blingy flats, alarm flickering
in our eyes.

He was the one who collapsed
in cardiac arrest six years ago on
an airport floor, utterly gone, only
to pop back with a single shock
to halt his fluttering heart, give
it a chance to restart.

He saw our concern before we
said a word: “Not me, the car.”
And we trooped outside, coatless,
to stand in the drizzle and look
at the spot across the road where
he’d backed up too far, sinking
into a half-century’s worth of
lawn clippings and detritus that
my father left behind, making
for soft, tire-swallowing mulch.

My sister, always the innovator,
dashed to the garage for long,
slender pieces of wood to slide
under the front tires. I retrieved
two carpet remnants, having read
years ago that if you get stuck in sand,
try to drive out on bits of rug.

Neither worked. We gave up, called
for roadside service—40 minutes,
they said, which turned into another
40 minutes and another before
I called again, pulling the old guy
card—my “husband,” 82, needing to get
home to take his medication—mostly true
but not as urgent as I made it.

And when—exhausted, anxious—
we finally saw the headlights
of the tow truck blazing through
the rural dark, illuminating
the slanting showers that had
let loose, I thought, not for the first
time, Hey, no one died.

And no one had, and no one did,
and tow guy Chue (whose name, he
told us, rhymes with “shoe”) arrived
at last to gently nudge the Civic
bit by muddy bit with a gentle but firm
tug, and another, and another,
and another—one of us in the car
shifting from neutral to drive on
command, the other damp and hooded
standing by, watching—

marveling again at the skills
and patience required to extract us
when we’re stuck, to jumpstart us
so that we might drive off into
the rest of these never-long-enough
little lives.