I met my grandmother’s cousin today, on her 92nd birthday. She was a real spitfire in her youth, they tell me, and I see it in the twinkle in her eye. They remember her for her love of adventure when she came to live with them in St Croix, her wigs, her lovers. Yes, this woman is of my flesh and blood. Later, my father and I sort out family stories, immediate and extended. I am so grateful for this time here with him. I find myself closing my eyes, trying to draw out the family tree, connect the stories to the branches, sew in all of the connections.
This afternoon in my father’s old bread truck, the one that was once his brother’s, gutted and refitted like a boat—a place for everything, neat and tidy systems, a love and careful attention paid to each inch in a way that most homes never get—we drove in the screaming van, past flashing lights, a car plowed straight into the fence. That just happened, I say out loud to no-one in particular, meaning nothing in particular. I watch as people converge around the car. We are headed toward a lake we used to swim at when I was a child, a lake I have no recollection of. I expected that I might remember it when we arrive, but I don’t. We circle the parking lot, then turn back. When we pass by the accident site again, there is a swarm of ambulances and firetrucks, men in uniform. I look closer and the entire roof of the car has been peeled back. There are people working diligently and there are stretchers. In the time we are abstractly exploring memory, men had peeled the roof from the car, like a sardine can. In a moment, I am overcome with emotion. My hand flies to my chest; tears burn at my eyes; my breath catches in my throat. Death. I repeat something akin to prayer. Please let them be ok. Please let them be ok. Strangers. It wasn’t long ago I was having a conversation with a friend about the moments that everything changes, the moments where life will never be the same. What was playing on the radio moments before that car needed to be peeled open like a sardine can? What microdrama was being played out inside that car? Was someone in the backseat causing a disturbance? Was everyone lost in thought? Where were they headed? Was it someone travelling alone? Were they thinking about where they had just come from, where they were headed? Now, instead, a sea of flashing lights, stretchers, curled back white metal.
I hold my hand to my chest for a long time as we continue to drive, and then we arrive at dinner. I sit across the booth from my father and we don’t talk about it. We talk about family, about relationships, about the nature of knowing self, knowing other. In some way we are exactly talking about what we saw. We are talking about what it means, the fierceness and immediacy of life, the urgency. How do we navigate the ways we love each other, the ways we hurt each other, while holding firm to that there may not be a tomorrow? There may not be a tomorrow. I remember all of the times I thought I might lose the people who I love. I have received too many of those phone calls for how many years I have been here. I remember, too, that moment of spinning, on the road not too far from here, the car careening across the highway, my hot chocolate making an arc across the car, the fear and amazement in both of our eyes as we acknowledged our nearness to the edge of something, our powerlessness against it. In the end it was nothing. It was an encapsulated moment where we got to walk away with nothing to show for it but our stories, some scrapes on a car that wasn’t even mine. Still, the closeness to the edge stays with me.
Fragility has never been a hard concept for me to grasp.
So, when I look at my father, I remember what he looked like in a hospital bed as well as what he looked like with his hand on the tiller, the sea and the horizon behind him. Yes, we are all of these things, all of us. Today it is easy to remember how much I love humanity, how much we are all a part of one another, how lovely and poetic are our struggles. Today I love them—our struggles—yours and mine, the particular ones. Today I love this beachhouse, even the fights we had in that yard, along with the memories of my feet reaching just to the edge of that chair as my mother’s hands tied my shoes. I love every bit of it, the ways we loved each other, the ways we failed to, the ways we are all working and making it better now. Yes, today I love every last inch of it, and as for the people in that sardine can car, please let them be ok, let them have another day, let them find a day where they can love every last bit of it, every inch, and then sleep, in peace, and wake to another good day; let them have gratitude and peace. Let us all have that. Let us find a way to love unfettered, to see clearly, and to know how lucky we really are.
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