Before I parked, my only problem had been that I was running five minutes late to therapy. But I always ran five minutes late, so that was nothing new. I’d just have a little less time to rattle on about feeling anxious for no obvious reason to my perpetually perplexed therapist who wore a concerned smile, her head tilted slightly to the left. 

Everything had been fine when I drove into the Richmond Kaiser parking structure, at least at first. My dusty Hylander cleared the building’s entrance no problem. But three concrete support columns in, something suddenly thudded, screeched, and cracked above me. The car stopped, startling my memory awake. Oh shit. How could I have forgotten? My Sears roof cargo bin! 

Cars gathered in my rearview mirror. One of them honked. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one running five minutes late. Spearheading a sad parking parade to nowhere, I rolled down my window and offered a limp-wristed apology wave to the bristling drivers behind me, all waiting to drive up the ramp I was blocking. 

 “Can you move your vehicle, Mam?” a security guard tapped my passenger window.I startled, then nodded, and pressed lightly on the gas, causing the cargo bin to twist and wrench tighter between my car and the concrete pillar above. Holding up his hand, the guard shook his head. “Try going in reverse. Maybe we can dislodge it.”

I followed his instructions step-by-step without breathing. Together we eventually pried the broken plastic bin off of my SUV’s roof and stuffed it into the trunk. I thanked and thanked him, then quickly drove up the ramp, found a spot, and ran to my appointment, careful not to make eye contact with anyone along the way. 

My therapist took a deep breath while I vibrated in my chair. “Would you like some water?” she asked. I shook my head no, then recounted my parking debacle while she listened, her head tilted to the left. I complained about how I was too quick to anger. I wondered how to achieve more calm and better control, so she recommended a book about essential oils. “Maybe try lavender. Or clary sage. That’s a good one, you know. Sage.” What we never discussed was ADHD. Because how could a middle-aged woman have ADHD and not even know it?

“I think I might have ADHD,” I mused five years later to a different therapist. It appeared that she’d frozen on my screen, so I checked my wifi signal. But then she leaned forward, blinking, brow furrowed. “Why do you think that?”

 “Well, my biological father has it. And my brother has it. And sometimes I have to sit in the car to get any writing done. But my thoughts still bounce like a pinball, ricocheting between the windshield and my computer. Especially when I have to do structural revision, like fixing plot. Or math word problems. I hated those. I could never hold them in my brain long enough to solve them. Then, last year, when my teenage daughter was diagnosed with ADHD, I started reading about it.” I paused to take a breath. “It felt like I was reading about myself.”

She let the silence linger long after my words faded, the way therapists do. I shifted in my chair and glanced out the window. Fifteen crows swooped in big loops around a pine tree, fussing and cawking. What had upset them so? Could it be a hawk, or was this a typical Tuesday morning crow family dispute? “Sorry,” I said, remembering we were still in session. 

“That’s okay.” She smiled and wrote something down. “I think we should get you evaluated.”