Credit Where Credit Is Due

You know, I've done the God thing quite a bit here recently. I know you have GOT be thinking, "Jeezus B.A., commit or get off the pot, already."

So I don't want this to turn into another yet religious epiphany post, or a theological musings post.

And yet, what happened to our family on Saturday seems kind of ironic, considering that all this stuff has been on my mind lately.

You all know by now how I feel about the whole convoluted ball of religious wax.

Sometimes I feel very much as though I must be an idiot not to believe. Sometimes, I think I must be an idiot to even consider it.

And sometimes...sometimes life just reaches out to slap you right in the face, grab you by the lapels, and scream at you...WHAT MORE PROOF DO YOU NEED YOU FOOL????

See...a thing happened to us Saturday. And I feel like there is somebody who needs thanking. But whom? God? Jesus? The whims of Fate? The random luck of time and chance? I don't know. Despite my lamentations about lack of faith, I still have a very difficult time with accepting that my life is just an extension of someone else's will, wise and omnipotent though he may be. I dislike thinking of mankind as so many puppets or errant children.

So though I do feel an enormous amount of gratitude, I struggle with the idea of thanking a deity in whom I do not have inexorable faith.

But someone. Someone or something is responsible for the fact that I am not spending today making funeral arrangements for my husband and my oldest son. Someone is responsible for the fact that I am not walking around with a ragged, gaping wound where my heart used to be. Someone is responsible for the fact that my life and my sense of security is intact.

Because on Saturday, a beautiful balmy Spring day, in the space of about 30 seconds, while Diminutive One and I looked on in impotent terror, my Husband and oldest son could have died 4 different ways. But they did not.

Would you like to hear about it? Because I very much need to tell you about it.

Saturdays in the Spring are mostly spent ferrying the boys from one baseball game to another. We don't mind, really. We enjoy watching the boys play, being freed from the responsibilities with which we would otherwise be faced with at home, and relishing the balm of fresh air and sunshine after a winter of gray and dreary weather.

This past Saturday was no exception. In seperate vehicles we left the ballpark where Pre-Pubescent one had just played. Our destination was a local burger joint, where we planned to grab a quick bite to eat before heading to another ballpark for Diminutive One's 5:00 pm game.

Traffic was heavy, but that's nothing out of the ordinary around here, particularly on the weekends. Neither one of us thought much about it.

Diminutive One and I were travelling in my van directly behind Husband's aging but still dependable Jeep Cherokee, which carried him and Pre-Pubescent One. I could tell they had the radio turned up loud, and were belting away in their shared love of heavy metal music. Pre-Pubescent One, inspired by Guitar Hero, had recently raided Husband's CD collection, and spent much of the previous week uploading music such as Black Sabbath, Metallica, Meatloaf and Guns N' Roses to his iPod. I saw him do an air riff to the beat of whatever cacophanous thing they were listening to.

One moment Diminutive One and I were happily head bopping to Mika. And the next moment, I was screaming.

It almost seemed as if the tan SUV type vehicle was lying in wait for husband, so perfectly timed was the burst of speed that propelled him out into traffic, and directly on a collision course with my husband and child.

From my perspective, impact was a certainty. There was nothing Husband could do, nowhere to go. The SUV was going to t-bone the Jeep on Pre-Pubescent One's side. I felt sick and helpless. All I could do was scream.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Diminutive One couldn't see from his vantage point in the backseat behind me. But a minor fender bender months earlier had shaken him up quite a bit and made him acutely aware of the perils of automobile travel. My scream unnerved him, and though he couldn't see what was happening, he knew it was bad. Very bad. And so he screamed too.

Later Husband said he saw the vehicle inching slowly forward and had a feeling that the driver was going to make an ill timed break for it. He veered sharply to the left, and miraculously, the SUV missed them by a hair's breadth. But his evasive maneuver had put the Jeep directly into the path of oncoming traffic. I slammed on my brakes and braced for an impact that never came. The driver of the car in the other lane had slammed on his brakes as well and avoided hitting the Jeep head on, again, by a mere fraction of an inch.

The Jeep careened off the road and down an slight embankment. It went up on two wheels and I screamed again, realizing it was going to roll.

You know how people describe things moving in slow motion in moments of crisis? It's very true. It seemed to me that the wheels of the Jeep simply floated back to the ground, but in reality, it landed with a hard jolt, thankfully, on four wheels once again, instead of on it's top like an overturned insect.

Unfortunately, the Jeep still had plenty of forward momentum, which was only a problem because directly in front of it, was a telephone pole. I thought, once again, that impact was a certainty. But Husband managed to stop the Jeep several inches from the pole.

There were brakes and tires squealing, dust billowing, horns honking. With all the traffic on the road, there could have been a truly horrendous pile-up. But nobody hit anybody else.

I honestly don't know how an accident didn't happen.

The SUV never stopped. At one point, as it was fleeing the scene, the SUV was directly adjacent to my Van and I looked in, my fingers frantically scrabbling to find the button to roll down the window and give him a piece of my fear fragmented and nearly inchoherent mind.

The vehicle was full of teenaged boys. I looked right into the eyes of the kid who was driving and saw mortal fear combined with blind panic. His passengers were all dumb-struck. Their mouths hung open and their eyes were wide with disbelief. The driver looked back over his shoulder....and kept going.

I wish I had had the presence of mind to get his license plate number. But I was too concerned with the well-being of Husband and Pre-Pubescent One. Although they had not been hit, I feared there might still be injuries. I put on my blinker so I could cross traffic and join them on the shoulder to assess the situation.

But before I could get there, Husband maneuvered the Jeep back onto the road, and started off. He raised his hand to say "We're okay" and continued on to the restaurant.

I was badly shaken and so was Diminutive One. I can't describe to you the sheer horror of watching what you think to be the certain death of two people you love more than anything in the world; one to whom you pledged your life, the other to whom you gave life.

In my mind's eye I could very clearly see shattered glass, bent and twisted metal, fountains of blood, bodies broken and bleeding. I could hear sirens wailing, paramedics barking orders, my son calling my name. It was so real that I had to literally shake my head to banish the images.

I felt violently ill and inexplicably dizzy. I couldn't seem to breathe normally. Diminutive One was weeping quietly in the back seat, uncertain if his Dad and brother were okay.

"It's okay. They're not hurt. I can seem them. Look, there's Dad driving off now. See him waving?"

He was reassured, but like me, far from over it. We were both completely and thoroughly shell shocked.

When we arrived at the restaurant, Husband jumped out of the Jeep and ran over to the van.

"Baby are you okay?"

ME? He's asking me if I'm okay?

I grabbed him around the neck and sobbed into his shoulder.

"NO! I am NOT okay! That really SCARED me goddammit!!"

He just held me while I cried. When Pre-Pubescent One came over, I grabbed him and held him tightly. He endured my ferocious embrace and my tears, though normally such a display would have embarassed him beyond all reason.

He patted my back tenderly, "It's okay Mom. I'm okay."

I noticed later, as Husband paid for our lunch, that his hands shook ever so slightly. He and I sat down while the boys happily concocted their drinks at the fountain. He took off his baseball cap, slowly drew his hand across his brow, pinched the bridge of his nose and said quietly into his hand..."Fuck."

The boys were full of excited chatter about the near miss, but Husband I just looked at each other, cognizant of just how sizeable a disaster had been averted.

We went on with the rest of our day. There was nothing else to be done. In the excitement of Diminutive One's game, the shock faded and I began to forget. But later that night, alone in the dark, the images returned; gruesome and horrifying. I didn't sleep at all. Everyone else, surprisingly, slept like...the dead.

I tried to write about it Saturday night, but found that I was unable. It was too fresh, too raw; still festering with what ifs.

I have relived the moment 100 times over since it happened, and the details have imprinted themselves on my brain. Though they are safe, and I should just let that moment of horror fade into a distant memory, I can't seem to do so.

So perhaps now that I have written it down, I can exorcise those images, the horror, the terrible consciousness of just how drastically my life could have changed in those few agonizingly slow moments.

Perhaps now, I can have some peace of mind.

Except for the issue of where to direct my profound gratitude. Was it God? If it was, then why didn't he strike that little bastard down for nearly running my family over? Why didn't he put a policeman on that road to bust his cocky little ass? And then I think...maybe we were just instruments. Maybe it wasn't about us, but about the kid. Perhaps God used us to give him a little wake-up call.

I find that thought really pisses me off. As I said, the puppet thing doesn't really sit well with me.

So I think for now, I'm just going to thank Lady Luck. Serendipity. Happenstance.

If I have reason to believe otherwise somewhere down the line, I will issue a retroactive apology and do penance for my irreverent ways.

But just in case, and to prevent the tempting of fate even further, I said a soft and timid little prayer of thanks Saturday night.

I wonder if God hears CYA prayers.