We brought in the groceries and Heidi was scrubbing a few dishes to start cooking. For some reason I walked back outside with the kid. Maybe to make sure the car was locked? To check the mail that I already got? I don't know. But there I was in our front yard when I heard a screech and a thud up at the corner of Georgia and Napa. Another fender bender most likely, they happen often on that corner. We've needed a stop sign up there for a long time. When I walk the dog we need to wait at that corner, sometimes for five minutes, while cars blaze up the hill.
I looked up and saw the tail end of a large, white SUV stopped just past the crosswalk, the front half obscured by our neighbors hedge. Then I heard a high pitched wailing. The sound of a woman screaming.
I ran inside the house, yelled to Heidi to find her phone and handed her the baby.
"An accident on the corner, someone might be hurt."
I ran back out the door and up to the corner. A couple of our other neighbors were already there, huddled around the other side of the car. I made eye contact with our next door neighbor Joe and ask him if someone has called the police. He said yes and looks a little stunned. The people on the driver's side of the car are looking down at the ground. Looking down to where the woman is screaming.
I walked around to the front of the car and glanced down to see the handicapped symbol on her licence plate. The driver was sitting in the driver's seat. She was an older woman. All I could see of her was her long grey hair, tied up in a ponytail on the back of her head. Her head was in her hands. Her shoulders shaking with tears.
I walked around to the driver's side of the car. The door was open so I could not see the screaming woman, but I could hear the people who looked down at her and I could finally hear what it was she was screaming.
"No!"
"Wait, they're on the way."
"No! My baby! My baby!"
"Don't touch the stroller, you could hurt her."
"Nooooooo! My baby my baby mybabymybabymybaby!"
I looked at the gap between the car door and the street. Through the shadows I could recognize the white plastic wheels of a small umbrella-stroller, attached to a mass of mangled aluminum. From what I could see the stroller was crumpled up like a piece of paper.
I turned my head then to the right and ten feet in front of the car, laying on the double yellow line in the middle of the road, was a blanket. A pink, fleece blanket with some sort of picture drawn in blues and yellows. Like a cheap Disney blanket. The sort of thing Christina had when she was a two and three years old. When she used to pretend she was Simba and pounce on us. "Pinned ya!" she would say. She gave us our character names too. (Rey was Mufasa, Jessica was Nala and I was Uncle Scar.) It was the kind of blanket that she would have made a seat out of to sit on the carpet and watch the same cartoon for the hundredth time, eating cheerios and singing Hakuna Matata.
"No. My baby!"
I looked at the blanket, then back to the stroller wheels.
Then I backed up. I couldn't walk around that door. I couldn't see what had happened. I wasn't as brave as my neighbors to offer this woman any comfort to tell her help was on the way. I backed off.
To the sidewalk, as the sirens came over the hill. A cop arrived and looked down with the people and talked into his walkie talkie.
"It's gonna be ok."
"No! No! My Baby!"
The baby wasn't crying.
Was she ok? Shouldn't she be crying? That's all I could think.
Rey jogged up the hill, as the fire truck approached with paramedics. I stopped him. I told him it was a kid. Not to look. Not to go over there. More cops arrived and one asked us if we saw the accident, I said that I only heard it and so he waved us away. We turned away and walked back down the hill. I didn't want to see a stretcher.
I don't recall the short walk back to our gate, but I may have ran. I felt like running. When I walked back into our apartment and Heidi was in the hallway. She saw me and asked if everything was ok. I just started crying. She held me there and I couldn't tell her anything for a couple minutes. We went into the kitchen and Clara Mae was there playing on the floor. She smiled at me and when I saw her there I thought about losing her.
God dammit. Hearing that woman's anguish, seeing the stroller twisted, seeing the pink blanket laying there on the cold asphalt. It just brought all of those fears to the surface. The fears that every parent has I guess. From the sniffles, to checking that they haven't stopped breathing in their crib, to the bonks on the head and the hard falls when they're getting their sea legs. That visceral, animal, protection instict that kicks in when you have a child. I knew I had it, but when I walked up to that corner tonight, I truly felt it.
I love my baby so much. Tonight, hearing that woman screaming for her child, I felt myself there, in her voice. It was terrifying.
When I put Clara Mae to bed tonight, singing softly, Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd, whatever lyrics came to mind, I could feel her breathing, I could feel her body relax as she slipped into sleep. I never want anything bad to ever happen to her. She is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
I don't know what this all means or why I am writing this down. All I can say is, to anyone who is reading this, I guess all I'd ask is that you appreciate what you have. If you love someone and have someone who loves you, treat it like gold.
