We are driving 65 mph on the Long Island Expressway, our three children buckled up in the back seat, and our car is about to run out of gas.

"We're not gonna make it," my husband says, his voice melodramatic. 

"Just get off," I say, impatiently.  "There's a gas station at this exit."   I pray that we won't be late for brunch, where we are meeting my brother's future in-laws from Michigan for the first time.

It's a sensation that is familiar to me, though it shouldn't be:  the steady hum of the car engine lapsing into an eerie stillness, the cars on either side of ours suddenly louder and faster, the continual motion of our bodies winding down and tapering off.

"Nope, we're done," says my husband, as the car becomes a silent mass in the midst of a sea of speeding vehicles.  We roll quietly to the shoulder of the road and stop on the narrow strip of pavement. 

"Goddammit!" my husband yells as he hits the steering wheel and opens his door.  

"Do you have money?" I yell after him as he begins the 1/2 mile walk to the gas station.  

The kids and I sit for a minute in thought, watching my husband's 5 foot 11 inch frame get smaller and smaller as he moves into the distance. Soon he is a tiny dot, floating along the cement of the underpass, his Ralph Lauren buttondown, faded jeans, and Nike sneakers a blur of shadows. Eighteen wheelers whiz by and there he is, a barely noticable flash of movement disappearing around the bend.

"Things happen as they should," I tell my children.  I should have filled up the gas tank yesterday. 

My cell phone rings.  It's my mother, telling me to take the Northern State Parkway because there is a big accident on the LIE.  I thank her for the warning and tell her that we're not that far behind her.  

My son plays Words With Friends on his iphone, announcing a high- point word.  My other son also plays on his phone but glances up every few seconds, his face taut with worry.  My daughter asks how much longer until Daddy gets back.

 I think of all the times in the recent past when we have run out of gas: the night before my son's Bar Mitzvah on the way to a big Friday night dinner;  in the Hamptons last summer soon after leaving my sister's house; near the Roosevelt Field Mall when dropping the kids off at their camp reunion in January. . .

A silver minivan pulls off the road in front of us.  "We have company," I joke.  A woman in a sari gets out, holding a baby, and walks around the grass for a few minutes.  She hands the baby to a passenger in the back seat and switches places with a man in the front.  Their doors slam shut and they pull off the shoulder, continuing on their way.  An old Honda appears behind us.  Two young men get out and begin to change a shredded tire.  "Wow, that tire is messed up," says my son.  

I look out the front windshield and see the familiar gait from far down the road.  "There he is," I tell my kids.  The brown and blue of my husband's distant form is mixed with the bright red of a plastic gas container.  

After filling the car with the small amount of fuel and stopping at the station to put more in, we are back on the road.  

We make it to the restaurant in Manhattan 1/2 hour late.  

"Things happen as they should," I tell myself again, later.  Still, I wonder what message the universe is channeling to me through my empty gas tank.