Why I Love Traffic Jams

Sometimes gridlock is the ultimate getaway.

By Heather Ryan

IT’S JULY, and we feel it. The kids and I are in our car—without air-conditioning—stuck in a parking lot masquerading as a highway. Cars on Oregon’s I-5 shimmer in the heat, and my oldest daughter, Chloe, groans. “This bites,” she says. Ivan, my son, agrees. “I’m burning alive in here.” I turn my head to see if Giselle, the youngest at 6, will pipe in. She’s asleep, head back and mouth open, her hair in sweaty strands around her forehead. I turn forward, face a Toyota bumper and breathe in the thick air. Chloe and Ivan bicker for a minute, then find a crumpled Mad Libs under the seat. I can’t help it: I break into a smile. I secretly love traffic jams.

Whenever I admit this people cock their eyebrows skeptically and pepper me with questions like “You don’t mean real traffic jams, do you?” or “Yeah, but have you ever been in L.A.?” I’m a Californian by birth, an Oregonian by circumstance, so I’ve spent many hours perusing all the highway systems of the West Coast in aching detail. Sometimes people ask if my love for a slow-moving freeway is some kind of Zen-Buddhist-Hippie thing. To them I point out that there’s nothing Zen Buddhist about watching the construction of Safeco field from the driver’s seat of a Subaru. Americans waste 38 hours a year in traffic congestion. That’s almost two full days—in other words, a weekend you could spend on a warm beach, sipping a margarita. And still I’d take the traffic jam, hands down.

THIS IS PARTLY because I’m always running late, and traffic congestion provides a perfect excuse for my tardiness. One recent afternoon, for instance, getting out of the house on time with three kids, three backpacks, and a “Dental Hygiene and Insurance questionnaire” (one for each kid) proved too great a challenge. By the time I pulled out of the driveway we were already 15 minutes late. But then, thank goodness, a pile of logs slipped from the back of a semi and blocked traffic. A quick call to the dentist (with requisite reference to a traffic cam), a little begging, and we were rescheduled for 30 minutes later. Thanks to traffic I’d parlayed a 15-minute deficit into a 45-minute advantage. Maybe I’m reaching here, but I think Einstein would have been impressed by my ability to bend time.

Traffic jams also force me to slow down, literally and figuratively. I’m a single mother. I also teach full-time at a university, and in my “free time,” I write. That feels like three lives squashed into one. I frequently drive between Eugene and Portland, and on the days when I-5 speeds along congestion-free, I find myself saying “uh-huh” and nodding while I execute lane changes. During the most stressful drives I’ve inadvertently agreed to purchase a Nintendo Wii, a pony, and a lock of George W. Bush’s hair (don’t ask). But when the freeway moves at a snail’s pace, I can sip iced tea and relax. Chloe will relate a story about lovestruck 5th graders, Ivan will argue with Giselle over the invisible boundary between their seats, and I’ll hear it all while negotiating a three-way snack handout in relative peace. Calm moments like this with my kids are hard to come by, and I take them wherever I can get them.

This past summer in traffic jams we played word games and talked about the Olympics. The kids asked questions about Beijing, and Ivan told us how he wanted to take fencing lessons, how he’d learned about the difference between rapiers, foils, and swords. Our conversation wasn’t dramatically different from other times; it’s just that demands from the rest of the world were held at bay. No phones ringing. No friends at the door. In the car, with taillights queuing into the dusk, those demands melt away.

Once near Aurora, Oregon, a chemical spill closed the freeway. The only thing close was an immense, blinking truck stop, the kind of place where you could buy a plate of liver and onions and then take a shower. The kids loved it; it was gritty and different. We looked at tire irons and ate locally made fudge. An older gentleman from Idaho struck up a conversation with the kids at the cash register. Ivan asked, “Can we see your truck?” The truck driver said yes. In the parking lot, the kids asked questions about how the truck worked, how many gears it had, what he hauled, what it was like to drive every day. After an hour the freeway cleared and we started our trip again, but the tone in the car had changed, the kids quiet, even contemplative.

The diversion had cost less than $10, but it had accomplished something. Too often traveling is just the quickest route between two points. We forget the vast spaces in-between. Aurora is a tiny hamlet that wouldn’t register on a map. I can’t imagine other circumstances where I would have agreed to stop there, but I’m glad I did.

Maybe this affection for traffic jams also stems from my first, when my friends and I spent an hour on the 1 in San Francisco one hot August afternoon. To keep the old car from overheating we had to turn it off, along with the air conditioner. We rolled down our windows; the air smelled salty and heavy with the heat. Wendy complained about her hair while I complained about my legs sticking to the vinyl seats. People in other cars swore loudly and yelled. A businessman in a Ford next to us honked, repeatedly, even though there wasn’t anything to honk at.

A few cars ahead, a group of boys in a vintage Impala turned up their stereo and the music muscled down the rows of vehicles. Then the doors opened and all five boys got out and started dancing. They shook their hips in the low-slung way of hip-hop artists and rappers. For a minute, no one said or did anything. The yelling stopped and everyone looked as the boys danced around the car. Then something shifted and people stuck their heads out of windows, shouting appreciation. The businessman next to us started laughing. As soon as the song was over, the boys jumped back into the Impala as quickly as they had come out. Almost immediately the horns started again, but as thanks—even praise.

Joy in the middle of a freeway: I haven’t forgotten it. Maybe it was the way the horns echoed down the line of cars, or the way we told the story all weekend. Traffic jams have become a way for me to stop and observe life. Even better, they remind me that what’s important isn’t necessarily where we expect to find it.

Heather Ryan writes a blog called Terrible Mother.