What Might Have Been

I woke early this morning, anxious to get the day started. I grabbed my sheets, knowing I needed to get them in the wash so I could move them to the dryer before I left for work. With company coming, I needed the one set of sheets to be clean and back on the bed for tonight.

LM got up to use the bathroom and then fumbled back to bed, hoping for a few more minutes of sleep. I quietly opened his door, careful not to let the dog out and tried to lay next to LM on his single bed. Eli, eager to be up and to get outside was all over us on the bed. He tried to lay between us, pushing me nearly off the bed. Anytime we successfully got him off the bed, he would bound back up, landing square on my stomach. LM laughed and we enjoyed a few minutes of joy together as our day started.

I took Eli out in the yard. I went back in to rouse LM. He crawled to the shower with a blanket over his head. Holding on to the last clutches of sleep. Eli followed me around as I folded a load of laundry and put the winter blankets, fresh from the wash, away in the closet.

The kids wanted to take Eli with us to the bus stop again this morning, but I had errands I needed to run on my way to work and I have to leave work early, so I insisted we drive. Kaitlyn got on her bus just fine and LM rode with me to help return a movie and a library book.

Near the library we saw a young boy riding a bike to school. The bike was low to the ground, which looked quite comfortable to me. Like a recumbant bike, but for the road. LM said he knew the kid, it was Brian, from his school. I handed him my book and he ran up to the drop box and returned the book.

Around the corner from the library parking lot is a four-way stop. As we pulled up to it, the car across the intersection was already there and stopped, but he made no motion to proceed. Another car approached from the right, but with the car across from us confusing the order, the car to my right started into the intersection when it was really my turn to go. I hadn't yet moved forward, so I just sat and waited for him to cross in front of me.

Which is when the car came flying through from our left. He never saw the stop sign. He came up over the ridge, over the railroad tracks and right through the intersection. He just ran right through the stop sign as if it weren't even there.

He was well through before I thought to honk. The car across from me was still stopped. I made my left turn and realized if we had gone a second before, when it was our turn to go, I would have been hit. Hard. On the driver's side.

A block down the road we saw Brian, peddling along to school on his cool bike. What might have happened to him, if he had been just a few moments behind?

I dropped LM off at school, wishing him great joy for his concert this afternoon, reminding him that I was so looking forward to his band concert tonight secretly knowing that my dad and Judy are on their way and will hopefully be there to hear him play, too.

And as I pulled out of the school driveway, all I could think was how different our morning might have been if that car hadn't hesitated at the stop. If the other car hadn't taken a turn ahead of me. If I had been more impatient and just pulled out. What a different day altogether, this might have been.



But for the grace of God, go I.