A Good and Grounding Place

My computer died yesterday, so I made some elaborate childcare and car borrowing arrangements tonight to go to my sister’s house to write to you about what blogging on 4Mothers means to me.  Having dropped my kids at my mother’s house (thank you God), I stopped at a stop sign and was rear-ended in my mother’s car by a hit and run driver.  As in, he smashed into me, screeched in reverse half a block to get away from me as fast as possible, crashing into a telephone pole before careening into the nearest side street.  Like you might see in a bad TV show. 

I jumped out of the car, memorized his licence plate, called 911, talked to two witnesses, picked up the pieces of my mother’s car (and unknowingly the other driver’s car too) off the ground, drove to my sister’s without closing the trunk of the car, went to the doctor, and am taking what preventative steps I can to stave off or at least minimize whiplash.  Now I need to go home with my three kids and wait for the police officer who will be coming over for the report.

I can’t write to you what I was planning to write because it would take quite a bit of energy to reign in my mind, and I think I’m going to need my energy.  Also my children are either sleeping or crying in the next room.  I don’t feel terrible, but I do find myself pining for some string of months without so much drama.  Never mind.  This is the life I’ve got.  My guardian angel might have been drowsy (I was in a crash) but she’s not asleep (my kids and mother weren’t in the car with me).  Things could be worse.

While life is happening to us, it’s good and grounding to have people who will help you through it, and some means by which to make some sense of our worlds, including the way they can completely change and crumple at a moment’s notice.  My fellow writers of this blog are my friends, that we write together is usually an energizer and sometimes a comfort to me, and as Nathalie says, it provides a means to tame erratic experiences into some kind of narrative.  This is incredibly useful.  I didn’t quite feel like my life had flashed before my eyes tonight, but if I had, 4Mothers has given me women and words that I can lean into.  This is important, and isn’t at all properly captured by the word “blog”.

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