All Of This Is a Gift
Enlivening the present through mindfulness of death, part 1 of 2.
I don’t remember how old I was. But I do remember the blades of grass; their intense green and stark differentiation in the moment.
I grew up on a quiet street near my elementary school. Two blocks away, however, busier streets separated my immediate neighborhood from the others nearby, and when my parents agreed I was old enough, I began crossing these busier streets on my bike to explore.
One afternoon, returning from such a ride, one of these busier streets lay between me and home. I could have crossed at a four-way stop, where marked crosswalks would have called any drivers on the road to look out for me, but I didn’t. Instead, I decided to cross further down the road, just behind a curve, where visibility was poor and there was no crosswalk. I began to pedal across.
Suddenly, a car appeared in my left peripheral vision.
I experienced the next one or two seconds in slow motion, as if time were a balloon suddenly inflated. The car’s tires screeched. I kicked back my coaster brake, hard, and pulled my body away from the car—individual blades of grass in the yard beyond swept through my vision—fell with my bike onto the concrete. Thankfully, my head did not hit the road—these were the days before every child wore a helmet while biking.
All was still. Two or three feet lay between me and the car.
Shaken but unharmed, I lifted myself and my bike from the concrete and looked to the driver of the car. His expression was inscrutable. “I’m sorry,” I muttered. Cars in both directions had stopped now. I got back on my bike and crossed the street; got away.
During the subsequent days, whenever I revisited the incident in my thoughts, I blamed the driver. He must have been going too fast, I told myself; surely this was why I hadn’t spotted the car before starting across the street.
That was denial. The truth was, I’d chosen a dangerous place to cross. If my or the driver’s reactions had been a fraction of a second slower, I might have died for the mistake. The driver, through little or no fault of his own, would have killed a child. My parents, without knowing it in the moment, would have lost a child. The woman who is now my wife, who was then only a child in another state, would have lived a different adult life, without me. And our children together would never have existed.
All that has happened since that day could have been otherwise. All of these things—the learning; the joy and wonder; the depression and anxiety; the mistakes, atonements, and forgiveness; the moments spent hiding and the moments lived beyond myself—are a gift.
And for as little as I can know about what comes around the curve of my own road, I can imagine even less about the curve of my children’s roads, as they rocket forward on their own bicycles, far ahead of me, as arrows sprung from a bow.
Decide, then.
What shall I do with this gift, now?
From what shall I release my grip, now?
Toward what and whom shall I turn, now?
What kind of man and dad shall I be, now?