Make it a Great Day; Get Hit By a Car.
Or how a brush with death really perked me up
Yesterday, I had to get out.
It was a gorgeously sunny, 60-degree day after a bunch of rainy, grey ones. Here in Central Texas, where weather only grows more extreme, waffling between a scorching, dry 110 degrees and 40 and drizzly, we embrace these rare, mild days.
Lately, I like to spend my outings on foot alternately running, walking and hiking at my whim. When I run, my heart beats faster, I feel the blood feeding energy to the big muscles in my thighs, my lungs are compelled to fill completely before emptying with each breathy exhale.
When I was younger and would run three times a week, I used to wish I could stop and walk, enjoy the quirks of the passing houses at a more leisurely pace. Note that use of the word “could” when the only thing goading me to keep up my nine-minute mile pace was myself. Myself and a whole bunch of cultural baggage that said walking was lazy when I was perfectly capable of running. There was fear of stagnation, of my body spreading and filling more space than was acceptable if I let up, if I relaxed for one moment and inhaled the dewy morning around me.
But now, I use running to invigorate. Then I walk by the houses and through the tree-canopied trails. I catch my breath and listen to the far away buzz of a weed eater, muted voices from a backyard, the odd birdcall I can’t identify.
I was reveling in this yesterday, appreciating the weather in a way you only can when it’s recently been so miserable outside. Enjoying the movement of my body the way only someone who tortured herself over its form in her younger years can. I navigated a short, muddy trail behind some houses, where cedars from the greenbelt overhung fences into backyards as hand-planted English ivy invaded the wild spaces from the same yards, the natural world and civilized greenery bedeviling each other as always.
I strode out of the shady woods onto a neighborhood sidewalk, the early afternoon sun warming my back. I passed a man next to a low-boy trailer, chopping brush in a front yard that wasn’t his. We raised palms briefly at each other in human acknowledgment. I see you.
Now on a flat surface, I picked up my pace. I jogged, approaching a familiar neighborhood intersection — one that would be covered in elementary school children and parents in a couple of hours, as they made their ways home in cars, on bikes and scooters and on foot, comfortably traversing the intersection’s crosswalks where drivers are accustomed to watching for the erratic movements of the young. But for now, the four-way stop was empty of people, save whomever was driving the lone SUV rolling to a stop so I could cross.
I dimly registered the vehicle in my consciousness, part of my active mind still reveling in the weather, another part planning the next leg of my route and still another off in the land of imagination where all writers take at least a part-time residency.
As I passed in front of the SUV, a galaxy of things happened in the batting of an eyelash. As my hip drew even with the center of the bumper, the vehicle’s slowing roll reversed and became acceleration. My heart quickened, and I saw — no, sensed — the driver looking off to the left, where she was headed, and not at me. As the gap closed between manufactured metal vehicle and the flesh and bone of my body, my brain accelerated along with the SUV, flashing emergency signals to my working limbs and pulsing circulatory system:
Yell!
Stop!
No, go!
As my body complied with my mind’s last recommendation, I sprinted forward, just as a car behind the SUV, the driver more attentive than either of us, blared its horn in warning. My right hand, fingers splayed, landed on the hood of the SUV and pushed off, using that momentum to propel myself forward and out of harm’s way by mere inches.
Side Note: It took me five minutes to type out those actions which occurred in the space of a wink.
I stumbled to safety on the opposite curb, my heart throbbing like an overactive bass drum threatening to break free of my chest or escape through my throat. I began walking in circles, breathing deep breaths pushed back out through o-shaped lips. I was staving off panic.
The SUV came to an abrupt, rocking halt. I turned to look at it, halfway through the arc of its left turn in the middle of a now truly deserted intersection. A hand came out the window alongside a voice, thick with distress. The hand waved erratically. The voice called in anguish, “I’m really sorry!”
“It’s okay!” I called back, raising my hand in placation, just before bending over to rest my hands on my knees and finish gathering my wits. As I straightened, the car who had honked stopped in front of me. The woman in the driver’s seat looked me in the face and our eyes met in solidarity — the way you can with a stranger when you have both just witnessed something, and you share understanding.
“Oh my goodness!” she said, then pressed her hand to her chest and made the sign of the cross two times, fast, as if hurrying to capture the good fortune before it escaped. I nodded, still breathing deep hard breaths, “I KNOW!”
She drove off, and I turned to run up the next hill, a little faster than before, fueled by fight-or-flight adrenaline that still needed an outlet. Then, I veered off the sidewalk into the safety of the greenbelt, where there are sharp rocks, tripping tree roots, poisonous plants and venomous vipers, but no cars to mow you down.
I jogged down the trail, then slowed to a walk as I approached the shade of live oaks and cedars and the comforting sound of a babbling creek, full from the recent rain. I slowed, I breathed, and I laughed.
The day, bright and ripe for living in the moment a few minutes before, now seemed even more so.
It was brilliant and un-ignorable. Everything was sharper, more insistent about being noticed. The birds louder, the undergrowth greener, the clear creek water that I splashed across my face and neck colder and more invigorating.
I continued to jog and hike, ending my outing with a long trek uphill, following the power lines on a rocky, exposed trail I rarely walk because I prefer the cozy, treed single track where I can pretend things are wild and devoid of human intervention. But this day, I even reveled in the towering, metal structures carrying electricity that marched in sequence up the hill and how I can always find my way home by locating them.
I feel for the woman who almost hit me.
I’ve been in her driver’s seat, and I consider these close calls mercy warnings — incidents that wake you up and remind you to be more vigilant with your attention. The near miss prevents a later tragedy. This was her reminder, and I think she felt that.
The woman who honked in alarm and stopped, solely to commiserate and bond over the scene we’d just shared, gave me a brief but enduring sense of human connection and community — a feeling that we all have each others’ backs, or that at least people are capable of acting that way. There is hope for the future.
A run-in with a large suburban vehicle made my already satisfactory day feel better, more vivid. It turned my smile into a carefree laugh — the invigorating brush with danger, the genuine apology, the care of a stranger.
Apparently, all I need to “make it a great day, turn my frown upside down, and stay positive” is to almost get hit by a car every day.