Long ago, when I worked for the big green dealership, I remember asking Terry O., who worked for corporate, what station he listened to. I was looking for the secret ingredient to all his big ideas. I had him pegged as a classical music lover.

It turns out he drove in silence.

All I could say to this, being so full of all the wonderful things I knew, was “Oh.” But now, from a very different viewpoint, I can appreciate Terry’s response.

There are so many different priorities competing for my attention on any given day. There are You Should Have and You Could Have, fierce combatants with talons and long memories. There are the lists of things to remember and the lists of things to forget. There are the lunches to pack, the schedules to keep, the people to please. Time in the car is, so often, a chance to catch up – to finish that rosary or tuck in a Divine Mercy chaplet or make those calls I’ve been putting off.

I caught myself driving in silence today, with no “Baby Songs” blasting, no talk radio, no rosary in my hands, no cell phone on my ear, no passenger filling my car with conversation. What was that I was listening to? There was Terry O.’s voice: “I don’t listen to the radio.” There was a reminder to call Gordy and tell her happy birthday. There was the swoosh and crunch of my tires on the salt and ice mix. There was a thought I’d been meaning to get back to, about the lambs in the barn. There was the desire to go to Gran’s. There was a seed of worry, getting watered by that pesky What If voice in my head.

And then, just before I got there, was…what? What WAS that? It was a still, small voice, one I didn’t recognize. When I turned the spotlight of my attention on it, it didn’t seem to be there anymore. It was like the feel of cotton candy on my tongue – so sweet and strong, and yet, in a moment, gone.