“Life changes in the instant.” Joan Didion

In the essay After Life, Joan Didion discusses the ordinariness of things once something unexpected happens. By contrast, those few moments before the unforeseen event, whatever it may be, are finely tuned memories of normality. “It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it.”

Last Thursday, on a busy two-lane street, our Subaru Forester (did I really need to specify?) was hit from behind by a vehicle traveling about 25-30 mph, when the driver failed to notice both my blinker and my decrease in speed. We were propelled into a parked car waiting to turn onto the road I was about to turn off of. A right turn I had taken innumerable times before, on an unremarkable, clear day. That is how it goes. Unbelievably, no one was hurt. Our airbags deployed and our car was totaled. The car I had hit, a partially sunken shell, was hit dead-on the driver side door. My four-month-old and I were on our way to pick up my toddler from daycare, one block away. The brief seconds between the first impact and the second impact were silent. I remember thinking; “What is this going to look like on the other side?”.

I had no idea what was happening with Shay in the car seat behind me, who just moments ago was sleeping peacefully. The seconds between those two hits could not have amounted to more than 3 or 4. As soon as it was over, I jumped out of the car, grabbed the car seat and ran to the nearest curb, not knowing where we had landed (it could have been the middle of oncoming traffic for all I knew). Shay erupted into yowls only as I unhooked the car seat from it’s base, breaking that terrifying silence and relieving my worst fears. I sat there on the curb gently reviewing my child as I tried to understand what had just happened. I felt lucky to have been, relatively, unscathed, and relieved no one else was hurt. But that relief came a bit later, in broken bits, here and there, as I recovered from the initial shock. The long-term shock still seemed to be swirling about me like a light fog. Not overwhelming, just getting in the way a bit.

I couldn’t think of who to call. My husband was on a plane due back from Egypt in 6 hours. Jeremy being away for a moment like this is something we have both dreaded. As I collected myself, and did all the necessary things, a heavy exhaustion overtook me. As I moved forward, and slowly further away from the crash, I awaited some profound feelings to assert themselves. But mostly I felt tired, blue, and stuck in the loop of what could have been. Useless and irrelevant, yet unshakable; the kids hurt, the other driver hurt. All of it. “Ruminative thinking” as it is called in neurospeak.

“Holding two incompatible ideas in your head at the same time and accepting both of them--that's the best of being human. Yes, no, good, bad, life, death.”

— Ruth Brenner (Elizabeth Ashley), Russian Doll, Season 1: Superiority Complex

(You guys binged, obsessed, and revived our mid-twenties kohl eyeliner, Russian Doll right? All hail Natasha Lyonne.)

I felt I had narrowly avoided some deep psychological trauma to my toddler. I apologized to Enda for being late picking him up, told him there was a problem with the car and it was in the shop and that was the last we spoke of it. It was a non-decision to not speak of the accident in front of him. Now I know, this was a terrible idea. We know better than this! We have read about this! Kids pick up on everything. They get it. Katharine Nephew, Licensed Social Worker, who formerly worked with children of incarcerated parents said, “Kids are going to understand when something is wrong or upsetting to adults and if you don’t talk to them directly they will likely create their own version of the story, which can be far worse than the reality and even center around themselves being the very cause or reason for the problem in the first place".

Yet, somehow, I lost all this. As I processed my own trauma, or perhaps didn’t, my impulse to protect was in the form of avoiding any mention of it in front our toddler. We persisted in this mode until the following week when suddenly Enda was crying at preschool drop-off. He then told our neighbor that there was a crash and the car was at the mechanics. So I immediately said, “Oh ok, Enda, I am so sorry I didn’t talk to you about this before. Shay and I were hit by another car and the car was damaged. We are all ok but now the car needs to be fixed. I am so sorry I didn’t tell you before.” Or something like that. He responded with a very logical line of questioning, “Was it on the way to pick me up?” (Yes), “What kind of car hit you?” (Toyota), “I don’t like Toyotas.” (Ok).

Earlier that week I had mentioned to my friend Katie how relieved I was Enda had not been in the car, and her response, as she is a very wise soul was, “But if he had been there it would have been ok because they are resilient little people and there are ways of talking through these things.” Right on.

So I did some research to see exactly what I was supposed to have done and said, but didn’t. The Trauma and Grief Network (an organization out of Australia) has a clear outline of questions and discussion points including, “stick to the facts, ask them if they have any other questions, and be clear that the event happened in the past and that they are safe now.” Now, reading this it all seems so basic and obvious, but for whatever reason, in the moment it wasn’t clear to me and I needed these guidelines.

Short of building some sort of panoptic prison for my family to live in, I’m trying to take the experts advice and act the part of the calm and confident parent to, therefore, instill confidence in my kids. I made a mistake, and this is hard to admit. I make a tons of parenting mistakes every day. And I want to get better at admitting them and moving on from them. Here’s a straight-forward article in dealing with the aftermath of making a mistake from Psychology Today:

Making mistakes as a parent are what it’s all about. But admitting it and moving on? The mistakes I can do, the admitting and moving on not as much. I messed up. We messed up. It happens a lot. Here’s to trying again! Chin chin everybody.