So, life. It rolls on.
This is such an interesting time of year. On the one hand, it's so busy. Just constant nonstop everything. For us, it's the last soccer game of the year, the end-of-season soccer party, meetings (so many meetings are happening this month, for church and school, plus an extra four-hour training I signed up for; it's not something I strictly have to do but it is something I feel strongly about doing, so...I'm doing it), and the kids' Christmas program (and the rehearsals leading up to it). Also, my son decided to be born in the middle of December, so we always have that. I was so sure he'd be early like his sister, but they run on different timetables and always have. I remember strong contractions during Thanksgiving weekend seven years ago and feeling like that would have been a perfect time for his arrival; my mom was still here and she'd cleaned my house and we had a refrigerator full of Thanksgiving leftovers and I'd hit the point at which I could safely deliver at the birth center instead of in the hospital. But the contractions subsided. Probably he had intentions of making his way earthside but got distracted, much like the way I can ask him to do one simple thing and he will say, "Okay!" and then I will find him playing with his Legos instead of putting his dirty clothes in the washing machine and he will say, "Oh, sorry, I forgot!" He is his father's son. But then when he decided he was ready to be born, we went from nodding off peacefully in bed to I AM ACTUALLY PUSHING OUT A BABY RIGHT NOW in less than four hours.
That's what December feels like to me. The urge to nestle into the darkness of Advent, to slow down, to stay in wrestles with the frenetic bustle of meetings and parties and celebrations and shopping and checking things off lists. The deep desire for quiet contemplation against the surging pressure of nonstop activity.
And this year, this month, just for fun, throw in a tiny little car accident on the way to school on a frosty winter morning...
Only not so tiny. I'd just dropped off the kids at school, and I had plenty of time to swing through my favorite coffee stand for Barista Bonus Day. It's the one day a year where the baristas keep all cash from sales, and I am fiercely loyal to them -- one of them has been working there since I moved to Washington, and we're living parallel lives. We were married at the same time, our kids were born at the same time, and...they know what I drink and always have it ready for me and are just generally a really lovely part of my day. Their black-and-white mochas sustained me through my first year of teaching; now I favor their Americanos. When I'm doing Whole30, they cheerfully serve up black coffee and commiserate (and the last time I cut out dairy for a month one of them was doing it too). I love them. So I handed them a twenty, told them to keep the change, and drove off my with my steaming coffee.
And then one minute later, a young international student rushing off to take a final at the local community college plowed into the passenger side of my car. I had a surreal split-second thought: "Why is that car there?" That was followed by a sickening crunch of metal, and then I was spinning, spinning in the middle of the road. I think I heard the sound of tires squealing. I pressed my foot slowly to the brake and slowed to a stop, facing the wrong way.
Miraculously, no other cars hit me.
My first coherent thought after I came to a stop was, "I didn't even get to have one sip of my coffee." It had gone flying. It was all over the seat, the floor, my lap. My next thought was, "Huh. So that's what the side airbags look like."
The kid who hit me climbed out of his car and ran towards me.
"Are you okay? Are you okay? I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! I didn't see you! My windows are covered with frost!"
I looked at his car; he'd managed to pull over to the side of the road. His windows were, indeed, solidly covered in frost. I climbed out of my car.
"I think so," I said. "Are you okay?" He nodded, then clutched his head, tears spilling over his cheeks.
"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. What should I do?"
I wanted to tell him what to do, but in that moment, I couldn't even figure that out myself.
"It's okay," I said. "Look, we're both okay. It's just cars. Right? It's just things. We're okay." He nodded and wept.
I climbed back into my car and called my husband and reassured him that I was okay but that I'd just been in a car accident. No, he didn't need to come home, because I was pretty sure that wouldn't help in that moment. Yes, it would be great if he'd call our insurance. I had more pressing matters, like figuring out what to do about the crunched car facing the wrong way with the deployed airbags and the bent frame. I thought I should probably try to get it out of the middle of the street, so I started the car again and tried to steer it. The car didn't move; instead, it made this horrible groaning sound. I turned off the ignition and stepped back outside. Walked around the side of the car. Oh, look: the rear wheel is nearly torn off. I'm not going anywhere.
The police showed up before I could call them. How does that work, exactly? They pulled up behind us. The officer who approached me first was calm and kind. He took my elbow and steered me away from oncoming traffic (which was exactly where I started to walk), and after he took my information, he helped me back into my car.
"Stay in here. Stay warm," he said. I asked him to please go check on the kid.
"Oh, he's okay," he said. "About like you are." I burst into tears.
I called one of my colleagues and best friends, who happens to share my planning period. "Um, I was just in a car accident," I said.
"Where are you? I'm coming." (She said this before she knew I was only two blocks away. She's good people.) I hung up and wondered why, exactly, I was crying. I was okay. I wasn't even that upset about the car, because I was okay and my kids weren't with me and, as I said to the student who hit me, it's just a car. And most importantly: My kids weren't with me. Thank God. The other car would have hit directly where my daughter sits. I started to shake. (I shook for the rest of the day.)
My friend huddled with me in the cold until my car was towed away, and she even said a few kind words to the shaken, crying driver of the other car. An elderly woman came out of her house dressed in only pants and a t-shirt and invited us all inside to warm up, which restored a bit of my badly-shaken faith in humanity. My principal told me I needed to go home and gave me a ride to our other car at the transit center where Matt had left it. (She wanted to just take me straight to my house, but I said, "I've got to drive again at some point today, so I might as well just do that now.")
I made it home. Within minutes, our insurance had called. I spent some time on the phone, giving a statement. Turns out the man who called me had graduated from a school in my district, so he knew exactly where the accident occurred. This was actually helpful, because when he asked what direction I was driving, I said, "Oh, hell if I know. I don't do directions," he could say, "So if you were driving TO work from that coffee stand, you were heading east. I know the area!"
My principal said, "Relax. Take a hot bath. Read a good book." Instead, I headed to Starbucks up the street and bought another Americano, plus lunch. I couldn't even tell you what I did for the next few hours until I had to go pick up my kids. I didn't read anything. I didn't do anything productive. I watched a couple of episodes of Friends and that's about all I remember.
But it wasn't a bad day. It was so cold, but the sun was shining. My car was a total loss, but I was okay, and my kids were okay, and it's just a car. On the one hand, I do love that car; we bought it when our daughter was only five weeks old. I nursed her awkwardly in the corner of the dealership while Matt took care of very important paperwork. We hauled diaper bags and strollers and pack 'n plays in that car. I've nursed both babies in that car, played audiobooks and children's music for them on endless road trips. I've changed I don't even know how many poopy diapers in that car. My son projectile-vomited all over the back seat, and is it strange that I think of that with some amount of fond nostalgia? That car has held soccer cleats and camp chairs and suitcases for every family weekend getaway. That car has taken us from here to Montana to Minnesota, through all the landscapes we've loved for our whole lives. I loved that car. But even as I write that, I'm also instantly correcting myself: what I love is the family it holds, and another car can hold the same kind of space for the family within. Really, the family is what I love, and the family is okay, and that is really all that matters.
What stayed with me on the day I said goodbye to the car was the kindness of the people around me: my colleagues, the woman who wanted us to stay warm, my friends. Nothing about my life is fundamentally unchanged. We have to get a new car now, and I don't know when in the world we're going to find time to do that (see above: meetings, parties, birthdays, etc.), but that is a tremendously privileged problem to have. I lost a car, but I felt wrapped in the love of so many good people, and love -- as always -- more than balances the scales. I lost a car, but in the grand scheme of things, when we can lose each other in so many ways, on so many ordinary days, it's a small loss indeed.
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