She is like a big muscular lover, hulking but gentle. She weighs in at 14,000 lbs. I tiptoe around her, still shy to peer under her belly. Big metal springs, pistons, shafts, and tanks full of toxic fluids lurk below. There is black dirt and rust. Massive rubber tires as high as my shoulder. She is so lovely, and yet, so ugly.

I try to deny her automotive identity. I toss a rug over the massive steering wheel and put a pot of chives on the hood. I tell myself she is not so much a bus as a landlocked ship on wheels, but really, it is ridiculous not to recognize her for what she is. She’s a 1979 Chevy schoolbus. She’s my vessel.

This is the Universe grabbing me by the shirtfront and shaking me hard, throwing my carefully constructed identity back in my face like a glass of cold water. I stand naked in the face of my aversions. Nose to nose with the me I thought I was–Car-free Carmen, who rants about posessions and ownership, property is crime, yada yada yada. Not to mention cars – cars, good god! Wham! I now own both a home and a freakin’ enormous motor vehicle, keys in my hand and papers to prove she is mine.

I asked the Universe for just this: a tiny house among the trees. My wild imagination never dreamed of an old Chevy schoolbus. The trickster Universe gives me exactly what I ask for, but sometimes it comes in a really funny wrapper. The price of the gift is small but steep: one stubborn crumb of self-identity that no longer serves me. Just one passing iteration in the lifelong fabrication, that I in my delusion imagined was me.

In the shaping of heart’s desire I am learning to strike a balance between the general and the specific; to identify what I truly want without getting caught up in details. In this way my options are many and my limitations are few. My arms open wide to receive.