Close Call

It was an ordinary afternoon, one day last week. The sky was clear as I drove home from my weekly karate workout. (I run katas with a friend of mine in Blue Springs.) The cars on the freeway were moving at a good clip, I was in the center lane. I knew it was one of the last nice days of autumn, and so I had the top down as I drove. I was content, listening to the radio, enjoying the wind in my hair.

Then.

As I began to catch up with an older black pickup, the back loaded with big black trash bags full of somethings, the wind and a bump in the road caught one of the bags, and it flew from the back of the truck to land on the road in front of me.

Time did its stretchy thing as I gripped the wheel and looked to the right and to the left, only to find moving to either lane was not an option. A quick glance in my rearview mirror told me there was no one immediately on my tail, and I quickly braked to avoid running over the obstacle which had landed squarely in my lane. 

I'd managed to slow down enough to maneuver safely around the bag when I heard the blast of a horn. My mirrors showed a large black pickup with a lift kit barreling down on me - clearly the driver hadn't seen the bag in the roadway, or the flash of my tail lights as I braked. *ARGH* I switched my foot from the brake to the gas, and was able to accelerate just enough for him to have space to swerve around me, narrowly missing my bumper. I don't think I was breathing as I braced myself and ran directly over the bag, which gave way with a small thump.

It was full of clothes. Not glass, or metal, or wood, or, or, or, or the multitude of objects which would have caused serious damage to my car. Clothes.

I gave a huge sigh of relief as time returned to its normal rate of passing. Close doesn't just count in horseshoes and hand grenades after all.

I caught up again with the offending black pickup as I drove to the nearest exit, where I could safely stop to assess the damage to my car. The truck driver, an older white man, was clearly clueless. His hands locked on the wheel, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, he had absolutely no idea the chaos he'd almost caused with his failure to secure his load. *sigh*

The damage to my car is slight - there is a small dent in the bumper and the license plate is bent. 

The damage to my spirit is taking a bit of time to repair - my heightened awareness of the fragility of 'normal' has yet to appreciably drop. It could have, a moment later, if I wouldn't have, if the second truck hadn't blared his horn - I've been awake several nights trying to quiet the voice of it-might-have-been.

It might have been, but it wasn't. And I'm beginning to realize that if I spend the next few weeks acutely aware of all I almost lost, it is not such a bad thing. While I'm doing better these days, I still sometimes catch myself ruminating on all the things that are wrong in my world, and forgetting to be grateful for the things that are right.

The incident was a stark reminder of what I think of as my Libby Lesson: Don't let fear win. Remember to Live today. It is the only day any of us have.

In the wee hours of last night, when the voice started its litany of doom, I managed to turn down the volume by beginning a second list, one enumerating the good things in my life - and drifted back to sleep shortly thereafter, a smile on my face.

Good Is.