Chasing Cars

At first, it was like the period of time when you’re deciding if you want to run through that yellow light or stop. You know how that moment feels as long as the night before Christmas, right? And then when you come to a sudden skidding stop and all of your passengers stop their mindless conversations to brace themselves. And then they turn and criticize you. Especially if they are parents. At first, it was just like that.

There aren’t many things that my mothers’ side of the family doesn’t find as a big deal. When Rick and Bobbit finally had their baby girl, Becky (before my birth) it was a glorious day. They had wanted her for so long, and there she was. They couldn’t have another, so they adopted Emily. My grandmother had one miscarriage before the birth of my mother. My mom, the spunky yet logical girl full of independence. And my aunt, equally as adventurous. We don’t really need to talk about my great uncle’s eight Mormon children. We joke that it takes seven to go to heaven. And the eighth is the insurance policy. And that summer was the due date of Becky’s baby boy, a child who was wanted so badly she tried everything. And when she finally gave up on the hormones and they decided they’d just adopt: SURPRISE! He was on his way.

You see, my aunt promised me since I was about five that she’d take me to Europe the summer that I turned sixteen. For the next eleven years, I never let her forget that promise. And that summer, we backpacked for three weeks. We went to London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Some Cute Place in Germany, London again, and then home. There were fourteen hour train rides where I listened to the song “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol hundreds of times. I also read the last two Harry Potter books. It’s baffling to think of exactly how small and insignificant Ahwatukee really is. I remember it so clearly, even though it didn’t seem like much of a detail at the time. We were sitting at the Dallas airport for each of our planes home to arrive in their gates. My aunt turns her phone on for the first time in 22 days and begins listening to her excessive number of voicemails.

I, in the bliss of a two and a half year teenage relationship, had whipped out my phone to call Austin the moment we landed. I was talking on the phone with him about how excited I was to see him that night. I would be getting in late, about 11:00pm, but that didn’t matter. Three weeks is a long time when you’ve only got sixteen years of life under your belt; let alone two in a relationship. I wasn’t paying close attention at the time, but I remember in retrospect one small second. I looked up at my aunt who was on her phone as well and her face showed a hint of horror. Not so much for me to say anything other than,

“Is everything okay?”

To which she answered,

“Have you talked to your mom yet?”

No, I hadn’t. I was preoccupied with my boy toy.

And that was it. She boarded her plane, and I boarded mine. I had a row of three seats all to myself and slept as soundly as ever, seeing as I didn’t sleep a wink on the ten hour ride from London. My parents picked me up and in the car ride home I talked endlessly of our adventures. When we got home, I immediately called Austin to tell him he could head over. That’s when it happened.

My mom called me downstairs. It wasn’t like the times when I had a chore to do or she had read my online grade and seen the latest quiz on the book I didn’t read. It was like when she told me that my uncle had left my aunt and took my two cousins with him. It was like when the neighbor got cancer. It was like when my great-grandfather died. But somehow, it seemed even worse than all of those times.

I walked on eggshells down the stairs—bracing myself for what might come. She stood across the counter in the kitchen from me and tears were already staining her cheeks.

“What happened.” I grabbed her hand across the tile.

She didn’t say anything. She just looked into my eyes. I saw the clearest ocean with a drowned village beneath it. I saw the poisonous bacteria on the bodies we use to embrace. I saw the bird return to her nest to find her eggs shattered and licked clean.

“Mom… just tell me…” I was already crying.

She took a deep breath and said, “Becky.”

She couldn’t say anything more, and I didn’t need to hear it.

I was running red lights and stopping at green ones and all that I could mutter was, “the baby…”

Then all at once I was sitting idle at the red light I had skid to and this time I was the passengers in the car whom, after bracing myself, turned to criticize the driver. But there was no one in the driver’s seat.

My mom choked out the details. Becky woke up feeling pain, but her husband said it was probably just part of the process. When it didn’t go away, they went straight to the hospital. Their baby boy had a stroke. Only two weeks before he was meant to be born.

And then the doorbell rang.

There was Austin and his mom to happy see me again. I jumped into his arms and begin crying harder than one would think possible. My mom choked everything out to them because all that escaped my lips was, “I can’t believe this happened.” Austin was the safe place. The place where no one could touch me. He could wrap his arms around me and suddenly my mom and I were shopping for baby clothes for my new cousin. His I-love-you’s and it’ll-be-okay’s kept me in check until everything quieted.

It ended like getting off that one rollercoaster you couldn’t enjoy because the entire time you could only feel like you were about to fall off. You felt moments away from being tossed hundreds of feet in the air to certain death. There was no laughing—simply holding on for dear life and wishing every moment to be over. You know, reality is full of dreams and dreamers. We are all walking around living in either the past or the future: never the present. Every moment affects the next and can’t be erased once it has passed. This was a nightmare.

To this day, Becky has never been the same. They filed for an adoption, but it could take years. She has ups and downs and whenever she emails me she says she’s just “coming up for air.” To see my biggest role model stripped to the bone has, in result, ripped out a chunk of my adolescent bliss. Nothing is concrete—no matter how close things may seem, if something hasn’t already happened it can still be victim to bitter fate. Was it fate? Was it God’s plan? This began the biggest shake of my faith yet heard of. Because the day after we went to church camp where I turned every talk into a sarcastic joke and every song into a lullaby that would never be heard.

I lost utter control because everything seemed insignificant when compared to this. I hurt Austin. I went to Michigan for 3 weeks and didn’t talk to him the entire time. My thoughts we occupied with the pain I could only barely imagine Becky was going through. I wore black almost every day. That summer was meant to be a summer full of “pass-the-baby” and dreams of his future. It was empty. Becky didn’t come. The liveliness was gone. I came home and Austin broke up with me. Junior year started, and for the first time in my life I lived in reality.

The difference wasn’t much different. The deeply rooted bitter feeling against whatever caused this faded. There’s a relief to simple acceptance. Immersing yourself in anything intriguing can be a successful escape. Poetry, painting, and Speech & Debate became my entire world. And, surprising to me, it kept rotating—with the scars from the giant meteors fresh on its surface. And I learned to move along. The weight hasn’t left me and none of the adolescent bliss returned. However, it was also an adolescent ignorance. It’s not all rainbows and glitter—not everything makes sense. There is no one keeping score to make sure bad people endure bad things and good people are blessed. Everything happens because… it happens. There are a finite number of things in our lives that we’ll ever change. The reality of realizing this may not be happy, but it’s necessary. It may not be what I wanted, but you don’t always get what you want. It may not be under anyone’s control, but there has to be something more than chance. With every heartbreak, the heart scars to become stronger. Muscle weighs more than fat—you don’t get better by eating your weight in pleasure; you get better by running even when it hurts.

You make the decision to run with what you’ve got. Don’t slow down when things get hard, and don’t speed up when things seem easy. A constant rate will keep you grounded. When the light turns yellow, don’t always smash your foot on the brakes. Keep calm. You’ll make it through. That’s what I keep telling myself. It may seem like the end is so far away, but the light will change. And I’ll keep going. Because yellow doesn’t mean stop. It means stop and think. I won’t be ignorant or blissful. I’ll make it through—you know I always do.