Several things I am eager to tell you are coming together like God must have intended, but He hasn't completed them yet, so I'll wait to tell you about them, til He has.

In the meantime I'm so short of interesting things going on, that when a son asked me to drive him home after medical tests are done, I went with him to the V. A. hospital.

Hadn't driven in that part of town for years. My son said we'd be going, and coming back in between rush hours. Roads I called my own long ago were so packed Cars crawled from one traffic light to another, and then had to wait all over again.

We found the hospital parking area, and circled round and round, then claimed an empty slot. But considering we didn't have to pay for it, that part of the trip wasn't so bad.

As we navagated to the elevators, I noticed how packed they were. One short little woman, using all the muscles in herself, pushed a heavy man in a wheel chair that seemed to strain from the weight of him. To free up both her hands so she could, she cleverly thought to hang her purse on the hook of his IV pole attached to his chair.

While I'm admiring her thinking of that, I'm noticing other patients. Most seem intent on getting to their appointed part of this place. But some take time to visit a snack bar, and check out goods displayed for sale, all of which look like some thing veterans would wear.

We check on my son's appointment, where a clerk makes certain someone will drive him home. I notic how helpful the hospital staff are, how they take time to laugh and to smile with the patients, and when others arrive, do the same with them. A man who looks old enough to be retired from service, makes a joke of everything he says, and when a nurse appears to accompany him for whatever he's there for, he gives her a charming smile and says to her: "Take me away from here." That's about when I notice his washed out coloring, and probably why the woman who appeared to be his wife, understood his flirty attempt to camouflage a fear as real as that on the battlefield.

I don't see V A patients wearing uniforms or medals, but one clear thing I see again and again. The cut of their jaw, or maybe it's the way they hold them, and how they carry themselves with a strictly to the point tunneled out no nonsense.

The tests or procedures for my son drone on into a couple of hours. I close the book I was trying to read, and lean back my head, and wake up a half hour later.

The clerk tells me he will soon be out, and he is, walking like his every step is bathed in ginger. I was going to get him some food, since he hadn't eaten since yesterday, but he can't, so we head home.

Up the road ahead I see lights from police cars, and then spot an ambulance. Huge chunks of someone's car are tangled on the meridian, and then I see more smaller pieces. I drive around the metal chard, and keep on heading home. A few miles later another wreck decorates the edge of a golf course and I still can't figure out how that truck got where it did.

I'm so glad my son is not trying to tell me how to drive. He could, and he'd be right, since he's a driving instructor, but not today, please. Today, I just want to get home. But before we're even close, a funeral procession descends upon the road ahead, and finishes with a motorcycle cop yelling at whoever can hear him, to not cross on reds.

On a street that will lead to my son's place I've slowed because it's a different route than I usually take, and as I ask him left or right, a parked motorcycle revs up right at the side of my car. We manage not to hit, and I thank God out loud for keeping us safe, on this home town trip that feels like it's being led by the guy who said "Do you want to race, or do you want to RACE!" Maybe it's true that not all battles are fought on Flanders' field.