Hilary Moon Murphy

Still feeling the aftershocks

January 16, 2001

I had the flu this weekend, and a car accident on Monday.

Because of the warm weekend that we had in Minnesota, all the water in the roads had refrozen into long patches of ice by Monday morning. Looking back, it was probably stupid of me to be driving in those conditions while sick. The flu deadened some of my senses and slowed my reactions.

I had just dropped Cassie off for a half-day at her daycare when I noticed that the car in front of me was stopping. I was about three seconds behind it.

When driving on ice, if you brake too hard, your car will fishtail out of control and possibly go into a spin. I began to pump the brake, but it did no good. My car kept sliding on its patch of ice. I hit the brake harder, and began to fishtail. My car continued to slide.

Time slowed down.

There is a story by Jorge Luis Borges about a man who experiences an entire year in his head while waiting for a death squad bullet to kill him. It would not surprise me if Borges had gotten the original idea while being in a car that was about to hit something.

The road was lined with parked cars. As my car continued to slide and I continued to try to brake, I realized that I could not prevent my car from crashing into something. I could only choose the target. Should I steer myself into one of the parked cars? Or should I let myself continue on my present course and hit the guy in front of me?

The thought occurred to me that cars had less protection on their sides than on their bumpers. If I steered into one of the parked cars, I would do a lot of damage. Or maybe I would continue to spin and hit the guy in front of me anyway, only from the side instead of the front.

It was only as I began to crash into the car in front of me that I realized that I had my priorities fucked. The car in front of me had a person in it. The parked cars did not. I found myself whispering, "I'm sorry" as I hit.

God must have been watching over me. Either that or my braking job was better than I'd thought. I did no damage to the car or the driver in front of me. My own front bumper was a crumpled mess. After the other driver had checked out his car, I returned to my vehicle and sat numbly in the driver's seat.

As the adrenaline drained away, the self-recriminations began. What if I had been driving five miles faster? What if I had had Cassie with me? What if the other car had had small children in it? What if someone had been maimed or killed because I was too stupid to maintain more than a three second following distance on an icy day? Why the hell had I chosen to value property over people?

I sat there and wept, still feeling the aftershocks.

When I finally got home, the news from the radio about the mounting death tolls in the El Salvador earthquake helped me to put my little crash into perspective. One of the people I work with is from El Salvador. As a child, he played on streets that are now rubble. On Sunday, he had told me he hadn't heard from friends and family, and was worried. "The buildings in El Salvador aren't built like the ones in California," he said. "An earthquake crumples tenement houses like paper, crushing all the families inside."

The radio said that rescue teams had been trying to locate victims through their cell phones, and could no longer reach them. A reporter said, "No one knows whether it’s the batteries expiring, or the people." I thought of my friend and co-worker, caught in the same uncertainty.

Imagine your hometown. Imagine all your classmates, the funny little corner grocery that you grew up with, the old folks who lived on your block. Now imagine that you live far away when you hear that an earthquake has hit. You don't know who is alive or dead. You are surrounded by foreigners who change the channel when news of the quake comes on the radio, or who make unfeeling comments about shoddy disaster planning in third world countries, or even worse, have started making jokes about the disaster. Imagine your isolation.

So yesterday, instead of writing my entry, I called up my friend and talked with him to see how he was holding up. I also talked with him about my own minor accident, and about my own experience waiting for news from an earthquake. I had grown up in San Francisco, but was living in Minnesota when my hometown had finally had its major quake. "I felt terrible," I told him. "I kept asking myself why I hadn't been there when it happened. It's not rational. But when something happens to part of your childhood, you feel this rupture inside."

"Yes," he said. "That's it. I keep asking myself why I wasn't there. Why I'm not with them now."

I told him that I knew it hurt, and that I would keep praying for those he knew back home. I told him that I would be there if he needed to talk. I don't know if I helped him.

I think that he will still be feeling the aftershocks for a long time.

There is a theory that nothing happens without a reason. When I hear about tragedies like what is happening in El Salvador, I find this hard to believe.

And yet, when I think about my stupid accident, I realize that my moment of vulnerability gave me the greater depth and sensitivity to be there when a friend needed me. Perhaps there is a reason for everything after all.

Perhaps aftershocks can be a good thing.

I got more mail for not posting entries for a few days than I have for anything I've written here. Some of you even worried that I had disappeared and joined my notify list yesterday. Sorry. I didn't mean to disappear on all of you like that.

The January Web Rat Name Your Own Dare! (700 Words a Day on Fire of Genius) Pre-Dare Dare Total Yesterday 14,498 5553 0 Other Dare Participants: Anne | Jennifer | Jim | Karina | Marti | Rob | Sam | Trey

I also realize that I've got some catching up to do, both on Dares and on mentioning some of the good things that happened this weekend, despite flus and accidents and earthquakes. I will try to get all of you caught up soon.

Hmm