Now, you'd think that happiness would be quite elusive for a divorced single woman on Valentine's Day, but I would tell you that it's all a matter of perspective. I could have taken the day as a sombre symbol of all that is dead in my life - of lost child-like dreams of True Love and fantasies of Happily Ever Afters with Prince Charming, all strewn behind me like markers in a cemetery. The road ahead is obscured by fog. I can either assume that I'm trapped in a horror flick, or blithely skip into the nearest house to await the Zombie Apocalypse... Hmn. I think the "or" is supposed to be an example contrary to that proposed beforehand. It's late, and I digress.
I happened to have had a lovely Valentine's Day - attended a tea party along with my adorable nieces and their mother, who is beautiful inside and out. I had fun and felt loved. I've had a hard time of it lately with the PTSD, so I didn't feel a need for anything more. I needed to drive home for the weekend to see my children. My daughter's name is Lucy, aptly named, as it means "bringer of light." My son, Stuart, cares for people so deeply that I'm afraid he'll develop ulcers worrying for them. I had sent them Valentines to let them know that I love them and think of them always. More than they know, for it's not possible to explain to them how many opportunities I've let pass on their behalf, or how lonely I am sometimes simply because I want what is best for them before what is best for myself. It's no sacrifice: I prefer to be alone over being with the wrong person. If anything, my love for them keeps me out of trouble. Left to my own devices, I imagine my hormones or my artistic temperament (call it what you will) would land me in some awkward situations.
Tonight on the drive I was puzzled by the number of people in ditches. It had rained steadily on and off from the Lansing Area to just beyond Grand Rapids, and then turned to snow, but the roads didn't seem icy.
Until the car just ahead of me braked hard and sudden for no visible reason.
I touched my brakes - I wasn't close, and I was only going around 45 or 50 miles an hour, but the tires of my car were not pleased and apparently didn't feel a need to catch against the road properly upon that pressure. I felt the body of my car do a little fish-tail wriggle, so I took my foot off the brake and worked patiently at straightening it out. The car responded with about as much sensitivity as my ex-husband halfway through an orgasm - which is to say that I ended up backward in a ditch wondering what on earth I had done wrong in my lifetime to have ended up cold and alone so far from home.
It was with total detachment that I observed the ditch approaching. After the initial acceleration of my heartbeat at the realization that I no longer had control of my car, I felt myself relaxing into the situation as it unfolded in slow, almost stop-photography motion against the bluish light of my headlights across the snow and the shadows beyond. The car slid smoothly and turned as gracefully as if perched upon the diaz at an auto show.
I sit and take inventory of my feelings. I'm not injured and my car is still running.
I'm alone.
There is no one at home to call.
No one to be worried.
I call and worry my sister anyway, then text all my other siblings and a couple of close friends. Nothing anyone can do. It just seems like someone ought to know.
Life feels that way sometimes.
Like something happens that is significant to you and someone else ought to notice.
Perhaps that's arrogance on my part.
I called for a tow. I keep coverage on my car because it's old and my knowledge of vehicles is almost as limited as the number of people I could call if I were in a serious accident.
It was going to be a good half hour before the tow truck came.
I watched and listened and several ambulances and blaring police sirens passed on either side of the freeway.
I wondered how exactly they would locate me, other than by the fact that I specified I'd been going Northbound past a specific exit and was now facing South.
I wondered if they charged extra for having to get you turned around again.
I wondered if I was far enough off the road.
I tried to pull out of the ditch myself.
The wheels spun.
Nothing doing.
Out of my control.
Life is irritating in this; that you can do your very best and still have so little control over the outcome.
I keep trying anyway.
Philosophically, I start digging around in my bag for the box of Valentine's Day candy from my nieces' great grandma.
Couldn't get out of the ditch.
Had no hot date waiting for me.
Might as well munch on chocolates.
The first one had crispy bits of coconut inside.
A man from the road commission or something stopped and told me that the police were on their way, along with the wrecker. He offered to stay with his vehicle running nearbye until they came.
An ambulance stopped, and the EMT got out to make sure I was all right.
The police came and went, determining I was good to wait for the towing company, but cautioning me to call 911 if any other vehicles ended up smashing into the ditch with me.
Comforting thought.
Funny thought: Why were all these people making such a fuss over me? It was as if all these men were deliberately out on Valentine's Day, avoiding taking their wives or girlfriends out that evening. Shoot - they seemed almost disappointed every time they stopped and found that I wasn't mutilated.
I texted my brother something to that effect.
He joked that I should ask one of them out.
I thought about the last time I'd been in any kind of auto accident where I'd landed in a ditch...
Springtime, I believe.
My children were still little; They'd fallen asleep in their respective booster and car seat, strapped safely in the back.
We were heading along a dirt road in the middle of nowhere to visit someone. I was dressed in a long brown skirt with the brown heels that reminded me of a female Sherlock Holmes, wearing my favorite form-fitting shirt that I vainly supposed belied my twice-pregnant status.
The van had suddenly started fish-tailing strangely, skidding around on the gravel with a growing force of its own - Nothing anything like calm hitting my senses as I realized I was heading into the trees and couldn't stop no matter how hard I pressed the brakes or how tightly I was clutching the steering wheel (so tightly that my hands smelled of rubber for three days afterward). Reeds and water and trees came crashing toward my face as the vehicle slammed down deep into the drop at the side of the road. I closed my eyes helplessly against the slapping of the cattails against my windshield and the screams of my terrified children -
It seemed oddly quiet when I opened my eyes.
My children were sobbing and screaming for me, but a strange calm settled over me as I took in the fact that we were alive.
I unwrapped my fingers from the steering wheel with an effort - they felt stiff and strange. I could see the windshield was broken - the steering wheel of the van seemed strangely close, as did the ceiling. I unfastened my seat belt and splashed down against the glass arching over me - realizing with a shock that my vehicle was actually upsidown in a foot or more of water.
I could smell gasoline, and I could see it floating along the top of the water in rainbow eddies.
I crunched around the top of the seat, crawling with my bare knees against the broken windshield toward the sound of my children. I made out the side door above my right shoulder and reached up to pull it open. I could see the sky above the ditch from there, deep as it was, but the door refused to move. I wanted to panic, but then I saw my children's red faces, their mouths open and eyes pleading.They were dangling from their seat belts and screaming for me to help them, angry and confused that I had let this happen and hadn't fixed it yet. Determinedly, I craned around and pulled off my heel, prepared to smash the large window along the door open if necessary.
Now the door was hanging wide open to the sky.
It made no sense, but I had no time to think about it.
I snapped open the catch to my daughter's car seat and caught her as she fell toward the water. She latched onto my neck and right arm like a vice and screamed into my ear as I turned to get my son. I had to drag her through the water to reach him because she wouldn't loosen her hold so that I could move her above it. I had to strain upward to reach the catch of his seat belt.
He fell with a helpless splash into the water, landing underneath his booster seat.
I cursed myself, hauling him out and up again with my free arm.
I'd been so preoccupied with getting him out that I'd forgotten his seat didn't lock in like hers.
They were both screaming at me now, and the smell of gas was almost overwhelming.
I thought of the old trucks that would barrel heedlessly along the back roads, oblivious of the road rules of ordinary cityfolk, flicking their cigarette butts out the open windows without a glance behind.
I wedged my remaining heel against the front seat and pulled both children out from the gaping door into the sunshine, crawling down the side of the car and landing with a splash in the reeds before hauling them up out of the ditch. They were reluctant passengers because they were too young to understand that in making them move I was helping them.
For years afterward my daughter would wake from naps in the car screaming as if reliving the trauma.
We walked.
I was barefoot.
I don't know how long we walked, but there were no houses and it was a long time in the faltering, sobbing steps of my children before anyone came for us.
A kindly farmer called my husband and the police, respectively, and let us wait in his truck for them to arrive.
I don't suppose I'll ever forget the look on his face when he got there. He gave me a look of such anger and utter disgust that I felt smaller than the ash of the cigarette I'd imagined being flicked at us while we were still trapped in the van. He gathered up the children in his arms and kissed them and tucked them safely into his car, then proceeded to snap questions at me about how fast I'd been going and how carelessly I must have been driving for this to have happened. Head hanging, I crawled into the passenger side of the car and sat there, dripping and stinking of gasoline, ashamed at what kind of a mother I was to have taken the lives of our children so lightly.
It didn't matter that later the police determined that I wasn't responsible for the accident, or that the "shop" found out that not the axle itself, but the entire shaft that held the axle to the car, had been rusted clean through and snapped before my van had even left the road, most likely causing the entire accident in the first place.
It didn't matter any more than anything else concerning me had ever mattered while I was in that relationship. I was expected, on that day as on any other, to be home intact, on time, with dinner ready and the kids and house spotless, ready, if needed, to serve my function in the bedroom that evening whether we'd actually made eye contact during that day or not. It didn't matter that I'd been scared or that I'd been brave, if it were Valentine's Day or my birthday -
I sat in my car in the snow for over an hour and a half tonight, eating chocolates bought by a thoughtful woman who delighted in attending a small tea party held by her granddaughters, and I thought of all the things I've done and seen, and compared this night to others I have had, and I felt - seriously?
Happy.
No one was going to yell at me when they got there.
I might go home alone, but it was better than going home to captivity or indifference. (They're one and the same, in the end)
Overall, it was the happiest Valentine's Day I can remember.
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