This afternoon, though, I was standing at my front door, looking across the street as Alex (left) and Jack (not pictured) walked up the hill from the bus stop toward home. In the fastest, most helpless instant I could have imagined, Alex ran out into the street without looking - without even a pause… from behind a parked car… where there’s no way the woman in the red Ford Escort could have seen him. There was no way for her to know a child was about to run in front of her as she drove down our steep hill in the snow. And she hit him. I had seen it coming and was busy bolting toward Alex and yelling my fool head off when the actual impact occurred, so I don’t totally know how it happened, but somehow, in the five seconds it took me to get to him, the car stopped, the driver got out, and everyone was standing up - Alex included. He had gone down when he collided with the front right bumper of the car, but had sprung right back up, apparently fine.
I examined him. He really was fine. No blood, barely a scrape, no bumps, it was amazing. But I couldn’t feel relieved. I just don’t think that’s in a parent’s makeup. My heart was pounding, and adrenaline and cortisol were flowing, and most of my physiology still thought it had just watched its son die.
There was hugging, there was thankfulness that he was okay, there was scolding and there were questions about why, but eventually, life had to go on, and I allowed Alex and Jack to go downstairs and play with the Wii.
Ten minutes later, Conner (right) arrived home. I’d hardly moved from my spot on the couch since Alex and Jack had gone downstairs, yet my pulse had barely slowed. And he came bounding through the door like Tigger, yelling, “Dad!” and coming at me for high-fives, the toothiest smile I’ve ever seen carved into his face.
“Hey Conner, how’s it going?”
“Great!” he said.
“Good to hear. It’s been a really emotional few minutes here,” I said.
“Well it’s about to get even more emotional!” he seemed to console me. “Because I have a date!”
“What!” I sat up. “What do you mean, you have a date?”
“I asked Charlotte to go on a date with me, and she said YES!”
And then he jumped over the couch for a victory hug and more high fives and long story short I’m just trying to write it all down before the emotional yo-yo unspools completely and I fall asleep from the kind of exhaustion that only an afternoon like this can cause.
Breathe out.