arbitrary ruminations

once while driving the kids to school and listening to some music station of their choice at the upper decibels, we came upon an intersection where the person in front of us slammed onto their brakes which in turn caused me to slam on mine to keep from kissing their ass. Of course, with a mother's instinctual reflex, i threw out my arm to the passenger's seat. to what? to keep raven from flying out of her seat belt and chelsea from hurdling up from the back seat and thru the windshield with 900 pounds of force when we hit. yes i guess that's why i did it. well, anyway, we didn't hit the car, we did stop in time but with all of the sliding, brake slamming and super-momma arm protection, i failed to push in the clutch and the car cut off... radio and all. we came to a complete halt and silence. that same utter silence you hear and feel to your core after an accident has occurred. at that moment we were able to hear the siren that had caused the whole calamity in the first place. chelsea, in the back-seat had been so frightened that she had just squeezed her eyes shut, braced her self and upon hearing the ambulance, later told me that she thought she had been knocked out and was waking to the sound of the siren atop the ambulance that was taking her to the hospital. that still makes me cry when i think about it.

it came back to me today as an accident occurred 6 feet from my car. i was sitting at a red light and cars going in opposing directions in front of me collided and all i could do when i saw it coming was lay my head back, close my eyes and think about chelsea and her faux ambulance ride. i could feel my car shake, i was certain it would impact me. but it didn't, there was the sound of the sliding and then the crash and then the silence, the eerie silence. i was so shaken and had tensed so much that my shoulders ache now, my jaw hurts (i must've clenched) and my hands have not stopped trembling. but, i did get to drive safely away. whew!

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We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
-Anais Nin

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