Whatif

The thing about life is that how we just live it without noticing how close we are—at all times—to not living it anymore. Sometimes we are reminded, and mostly those reminders aren’t that fun. On New Year’s Day, we went to yet another party—our third in a week. We drove along the coastal state highway 1—a magnificent stretch of a two-lane highway (one lane in each direction) that juts out from a mountain and nearly laps into the sea. It was a lovely day, bright blue sky and big wind ruffling the sea and sending waves crashing into the sea wall and sea foam sailing through the air. I was chattering with the kids about books they’re reading and with Michael about the colour of the sea when I saw the squished car from the accident in the opposite lane. It hadn’t been a bad wreck; everyone would walk away from it—most would even drive away. Michael’s attention was distracted by that accident, too, and as we rounded the curve, he was startled to see the cars in front of us stopped. He slammed on his breaks and pulled hard onto the shoulder (in one of the only places this tiny stretch of road even has a shoulder). In the split second that I was thinking that it was unnecessary for him to have pulled off the road like that (we could have stopped in time), the car that had been behind us slammed into the car that had been in front of us. There were tires screeching and metal bending and glass breaking all around. The noise was everywhere as cars all around us joined into the pile up.

In some ways, nothing happened on to us on this shining new’ years day. It took only seconds for the screeching to end and the cars around us to come to a halt. Because we were towards the beginning of the pile up, we didn’t even have to suffer through the traffic that the accident would have caused; we wove our way through the damaged cars pulling off the road and were at the party in 10 minutes. This was a typical fender-bender pile up with no one’s car smashed beyond recognition, no one likely to be badly injured.

Yet the what-ifs, which are probably circling invisible all the time around us, become palpable at times like that. The car behind us that hit the car in front of us would surely have hit us much harder with 12 feet less braking time. We’d have been smashed into the car in front of us. We’d probably still have been fine—this is why we drive a Volvo—but what if? And what if we hadn’t gotten the Volvo and were still in the van we’ve had most of our time here? We’d never have gotten off the road so quickly—we’d have spun or tumbled—or have braked so smoothly. What if then? What if it had gone badly and we’d have ended up in a helicopter to a hospital on New Years day instead of a party at a friends’ house. What if our lives had changed in that moment of screeching metal?

Over the course of New Year’s Day, Michael and I found that those questions don’t stop coming. What if we hadn’t moved to New Zealand? What if I had never been asked to come to the Southern Hemisphere at all and we hadn’t fallen in love with it? What if Michael and I hadn’t gotten job at an ice rink together in 1987? The questions spin in circles through every piece of our lives.

We like to believe that we’re in control of our lives, and to some extent we’re right. We decide what to do each day and how to respond to the events life throws toward us. But in making those decisions, we put ourselves at risk for utterly unexpected consequences. When I decided to have lunch with a Kiwi and an Aussie in Washington DC nearly four years ago, it was just about weighing how much time I had on that particular day with how interesting it would be to meet these strangers. I could never have known that that lunch would start things in motion that would have us leave our house and move to the other side of the world. What if we hadn’t had that lunch?

And on and on. We can anticipate only small bits of the outcomes of our actions, and mostly the pieces we anticipate come true. Most car rides end up just the way you think they will; most lunches do not lead to international moves. Perhaps the most startling thing of all is that it’s nearly impossible to anticipate which actions in our lives will turn out, later, to have been the momentous ones. We know that our wedding day will change our lives, and know that the day our kids are born will be memorable forever. But what of the day you wandered into the café and met the future partner? Or the day you met the person who would become your best friend? Or stumbled upon an interesting question that would turn into a powerful piece of your life’s work?

When we engage in relationships or go to parties or wonder about something, all of that is a risk that something might, well, happen to us. And the happening can be terrible (a car crash) or wonderful (a new love), or somewhat indefinite (a new question that arises). And I’m pretty sure that risk of something happening is called life. And then, eventually, one of the somethings that will happen is that we’ll die. There is no escaping either of them, the life or the death, really. There is only how they happen to us, and how much we get out of them.

This blog, when I began it early in the week, was about our Hanukkah party and what it was like to have a big party in a new country. And then it was going to be about having the beautiful and kind Anna, our German WWOOFer, back with us (she came for a week and then left—we all thought for good—and then came back for another week and celebrated her 20th birthday and New Years with us). And then about the New Year’s Eve party. But the squealing of tires made those things less present in my mind. Here at the new year, I am noticing again the gifts of being alive. I’m watching Naomi prepare for summer camp, watching Aidan learn about the world. Part of me wants to hold on to this time—and to these children—with a grasp so tight that this can never get away. I was scared by the crash, scared by how close each of us is to death nearly all the time. And I’m also noticing that part of what makes this time beautiful is that I cannot hold it. Naomi will go to camp and come back different. Aidan and I will walk on the beach and talk about the universe and politics and history, and we’ll have to come home and google everything I didn’t know about to get the answers he requires. The nights are already getting shorter as we make our way through summer to fall, to winter, and around and around. All of this is a cliché except for how much I feel it in my gut. The waves come and go. Cars drive and drive and sometimes crash. And each second of this year is a miracle for happening in just the way it happens—whatever happens next. Happy new year to you all.