Smooth

I wish my life would go smoothly sometimes. I would like to have a period of time in my life where there was no ripples in the water. I’d love a long (not eons…weeks would be nice) period of no outside interruptions, or near misses for people I care about, no trauma, drama, or adversity. Just quiet. I crave quiet.

My life is too busy. Busy and chaotic. Chaotic because I am not deaf and I hear sounds and talking all day, every day, and I can’t get away from it. Living things in the world are constantly communicating with one another, or with no one in particular.

I often wonder what it would be to live in a little cabin in the woods, ala Thoreau or Merton. Getting up, doing chores, cooking, eating, reading, writing, watching, walking, sleeping; all the basic tasks of life without all the noise of the contemporary world. No tv, radio, phones, computers; news from newspapers, family news from letters. I feel a silent retreat at Marywood coming on!

The biggest intrusion of them all: the telephone. The telephone rings and I, or someone else in the house answers, and you never know if it is going to be idle chatter, pleasant news, or news that strikes fear into the very depths of your heart. Last night we received the latter.

A little after 7 pm last night, someone we know and love, someone often referred to as “Tots,” was driving his motorcycle over 100 MPH on I-95 north and hit a car. I could write a long description of the accident and damage that ensued, but I don’t want to remember it to even retell it. What is the most horrendous part of this story is the knowledge that if just one thing did not go in his favor, I would not be writing this right now. I’d be too distraught and caring for someone who was even more distraught than I.

Tots is alive, with no broken bones, no head or spine injury and no organ damage. Because of the quick thinking and unselfish bravery of the car he hit, he was spared being run over after he catapulted into the lane in front of the car he hit. The driver veered his own car into the median divider, rather than hit Tots’ body lying in the lane ahead of him. The driver and his passenger are unhurt.

Because of the unselfish bravery of another driver, coming behind, who stopped his car before he got to Tots, and jumped up on the hood of his car and directed traffic out of the lane so Tots could be brought to safety to the side of the road, he was not hit by many cars that would have not seen him lying in the road in time to swerve or stop. Because of the many cars that stopped to attend to him, and called for help, Tots was safely brought to the side of the road, removed from harm’s way, and attended to by EMT, who arrived within 2 ½ minutes.

Tots spent hours in the ER getting CT scans, x-rays, IV morphine, antibiotics, and wound cleaning and dressing. Then he went home to his apt with his gf to rest. I was told the bike was cut in two and so mangled that his brother broke down when he saw it. Tots is suffering today. He has massive and extreme road rash over many parts of his body. Today he feels like he was run over by a truck. I think he does not understand yet how close he came to that being his reality. Why is he alive after such a horrendous accident? Who knows. I just know that every thing that needed to go right for him to survive without life debilitating injury did go right. I am so grateful (to what, I wonder?). And I am exhausted from it. I’m not even his mother, or brother, or father, or grandmother. I can only imagine how they feel.

I started this blog by complaining about the intrusion of life. Life can only intrude in such a way when you care for others. I have for so long wished I didn’t give a shit about anyone. It would make it easier to be aloof, unimpassioned, quietly sympathetic but unaffected. It is so not my nature, I would be fighting against myself always to accomplish that.

When I was a child I use to swim in the ocean in the summers. I would spend long periods of time riding the waves, or sitting on the beach watching the gulls go up and down on the waves, steady, always afloat, not getting dunked. The Buddhist goal is to sit on the waves, be they tidal waves or ripples, just as a gull would sit on the water. Smooth. Steady. Undisturbed. I am so not there yet.