My youngest started college this past August, the last one out of the nest. It hit me hard, harder than I thought it would. I was happy and grateful, therefore, when she decided to stay in state, albeit an hour away. Not wanting or quite ready to let her go, and after 26 years in Denver and the surrounding suburbs, with no ties to keep me there any longer, I decided to move north with her and make a new home and life for myself as well. New, fresh beginnings for both of us, and mom could stay on the fringes and share in her college experience.
The weeks whirred by as she settled into her routine at school and I into my new life. Life was also happening, although not as happily, just about everywhere else in the United States as those weeks went by - Hurricanes Harvey and Irma devastated lives from Texas to Puerto Rico, as did all of the wildfires in Montana, Washington, and Oregon. Then the massacre in Las Vegas came, and Tom Petty died the next day of massive cardiac arrest, followed by even more catastrophic wildfires in Santa Rosa, Napa, Calistoga, and other parts of Northern California. I reeled from it all, overwhelmed by each seemingly endless wave upon wave of horror and hate, praying on a daily basis for some relief for all of those suffering so terribly. I even felt guilty for being so happy in my own life and for living in such a beautiful place far far away from where everything was happening. I tried to talk to my daughters about all the frightening events, thinking surely they must be affected too, but they were blissfully young and oblivious, wrapped up in their own lives. And although I admit their tunnel vision irritated me, I supposed that it was as it should be. It brought me back to the saying of the Buddha, of “we cannot worry about what we cannot control”, so I let them be and struggled to maintain my own sense of order in my own world.
Fall came, and in glorious fashion as it tends to do here in Colorado. I revel in this time of year - the trees, the crispness in the air, the pumpkin patches, corn mazes, haunted houses, sipping coffee on chilly mornings as you gaze out at it all. You don’t have to go very far anywhere in Colorado to see just simply eye popping vistas, and beauty abounds everywhere. Therefore, as Parents Weekend and Homecoming loomed at my daughters school, we made a solid plan to spend a whole, long Sunday together, just she and I and the dogs. I was excited and looked forward to it this whole week, planning a wonderful itinerary of what we would do - breakfast, a scenic drive, a stop at a pumpkin patch to buy our “punnins”, taking photographs all along the way, followed by sushi and the Broncos game that evening. It was all set and it was going to be perfect.
As a quick side note to this story, but a point that will become important to know about me as you continue reading, I make my living currently as a starving writer and driver, driving nights for the bar crowd. This of course means that I pick up drunk, obnoxious, asshole people nightly. I used to drink but now, constantly bearing witness sober to the effects alcohol has on others, I have largely given it up. I have also become somewhat of an asshole myself about it and its evils to my children, who make no secret that they themselves indulge. But, knowing that I myself engaged in years of my teens and twenties of drug and alcohol infused parties, I also feel like a hypocrite for harping on them, so I must trust in their judgement and the morals and values I instilled in them and let them be. Until today.
While I was out driving this past Friday (the 13th) evening, one of my passengers asked if I had been driving that afternoon when a traffic fatality had occurred on College Ave. I said that I had just started driving in the last hour and no, I wasn’t aware and hadn’t heard or seen anything. I asked him for details and all he knew was that a motorcycle had been involved and that the guy hadn’t been wearing a helmet. I exclaimed how horrible and tragic it was, and then we went on to other conversation, as we humans do when it isn’t happening to us.
Fast forward then to today, Sunday. Working nights, I had to set my alarm and arise “early” (for me) at 11 am in order to get dressed, make my bed, brush my teeth, take the dogs out and put everything in the car for the day and set out to meet my daughter on time. Even though I hadn’t slept well and was so hungry I was feeling faint, I pushed my grumpiness aside and forged on. The day I had planned with my beautiful daughter would be worth it, and the weather had also shown up in grand style. I was in my new car of 3 weeks, a 2016 Ford Escape that had come with every known option that I was still getting used to and loving every minute of, when a text came in from my daughter - “what time are you coming?” it said. I commanded the car to text her back while I drove, again reveling in the luxury of my new automobile, which is a drastic upgrade from my previous one, a 2004 Chevy Tahoe. “I am on my way and will be there at 1 pm just like we planned”, the car texted back. Then my phone rings. It is my daughter and the car answers and puts her voice on the car’s speakers via Bluetooth, another feature about my car I can’t get over. I realize for most nowadays this is nothing to get excited about but for me right now it is still an exciting big deal. I say “Hi honey!” excitedly and her voice answers back, a tone of frantic in it - “Mom! I’ve been trying to call you! A friend of mine from out of town surprised me this morning and I really really want to spend some time with her before she has to leave today - do you mind if we hang out just a little later, like in an hour or so?”
I’m stunned and hurt. My daughter has done this many times before, and as any parent knows, we frequently get pushed to the bottom of the totem pole when friends happen. This time, however, I resist and push back, my anger rising. “But honey, I’m already on my way, what am I supposed to do now for an hour, I’m only like 20 minutes away!” She replies that they are already on their way to breakfast, our breakfast. My anger grows even more. Oh, so she isn’t ASKING me if we can postpone, she is TELLING me, because she has already changed the plan and is already with her friend. I tell her to just go then, and I will go do some errands and catch up to her when they are done. I abruptly hang up. She calls back, and sensing my anger, invites me to breakfast with them. I decline, saying I am pissed and don’t want to ruin their time. She calls back one more time, still trying to get me to come, saying they are at Denny’s, which she knows is my favorite breakfast place, and do I want her to order for me? I tell her no, but for her to just stay there after her friend leaves and I will come after my errands and she will just have to sit thru another breakfast with me. She agrees and we hang up. I am now seething with anger and hurt. “How could she do this and now screw up the whole entire day of everything I had planned?” “I can’t believe she went to Denny’s with HER” and on and on selfishly I go.
I stop and get gas and go thru the automated car wash to put on my makeup and calm the fuck down. I finally do and continue on my way. By the time I get to Denny’s I am fine and resolved to the new plan for the day. So what, we’re only an hour behind, I tell myself, it’s fine. I walk into Denny’s and look anxiously around for my daughter. She is nowhere to be found. The hostess asks who I am looking for and I ask if 2 girls are there. She replies that 4 girls just walked out a minute ago before I got there. I call my daughter. “Where are you?”, I ask, “I’m here at Denny’s and the hostess said 4 girls just left”. “Yeah?”, my daughter replies, “I thought you said we were going to meet up later somewhere else.” “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”, I explode, “I never AT ANY TIME told you to leave Denny’s, I said I was coming here and you were going to have to sit thru another breakfast with me. What about that did you not understand? Come back now!” I yell into the phone. “Well if you’re going to be so mad”, she replies, “then I don’t want to come back”. “Oh, well you’re coming back”, I scream, “I don’t really give a shit at this point what YOU want!”, and I then do the modern day version of slamming down the handset on the cradle, which amounts to pushing the button on my phone and hanging up on her. I sit down at a booth and put my head in my hands, trying to regain what little is left of my composure. I SERIOUSLY need some fucking coffee and food. The waitress comes. I already know what I want, my usual that I always get at Dennys, and am about to tell her, except my daughter is calling me again. “WHAT????” I again scream into the phone, “Why do you keep calling me? Just GET YOUR ASS IN HERE, I am NOT going to talk to you anymore on the phone!!!!!” I again hang up on her, and now everyone is looking at me. I am a horrible, white trash human in that moment, and I don’t even care. I have lost control and I know it and own it. I glare at those around me like, “Yeah, say something, I dare you.”
My daughter finally walks in and plunks down opposite me in the booth. I give her the shittiest look I can muster and then immerse myself in the map I have brought in with me to plan our drive for the day which I now am less than thrilled to be doing with her. My food comes. My eggs are grossly under cooked and I shove them back to the waitress, telling her so and demanding my coffee. She knows I am in no mood and promptly disappears to oblige me. I start to devour my other food and my daughter then begins to demand that I apologize to her for speaking to her the way that I did and for hanging up on her. I give her a “you’re fucking kidding me right?” look and calmly explain that I have no intention of apologizing for being angry at her for screwing up our day that we planned and that I have been greatly looking forward to. I then change the subject and start trying to salvage the day, one of many attempts I will make throughout the rest of the day as things continue to devolve.
I ask if she went to the previous nights football game, which was sold out and I had followed via my various passengers throughout the night that had left the game early due to the cold. It was an exciting, back and forth game, with CSU eventually pulling it out over Nevada. This is when she drops the next bomb. Oh yeah, she went to the game, but left early due to the fact that she got a ticket from the campus police for underage drinking and “just wasn’t feeling it after that”. I drop my fork loudly onto my plate - “What the fuck did you just say, you got a what????” She then launches very matter of factly and indignantly into her version of the story about how the cops were being assholes and how she plans to dispute it because they didn’t give her a Breathalyzer, even though they gave her other field sobriety tests and she was openly stumbling. “Oh, ok”, I say, “you’re going to dispute it because they were wrong and you were right, is that what I’m hearing? Good luck with that”. My blood is now BOILING, but because I can’t kill her there in the restaurant with everyone else watching, and because my glorious coffee has just arrived and I want to sit there and enjoy it, I refrain from leaping across the table and wrapping my hands around her smug, 18 year old throat and throttling her.
I ask her how much the ticket is and she doesn’t want to tell me. “Again Morgan, I don’t really care what you want at this point. I asked you a question and you will answer me.” “$150”, she snips. I then pump her for details of the entire story and the story keeps changing and evolving so I eventually give up. She intimates at one point that other parents of her friends “may have” seen them drinking and allowed it, to which I again blow my stack and tell her that if I ever find out who these parents are I will press charges against them so she better never tell me. If they want to let their own kids drink that’s one thing, but they’re not going to let MY child drink. She then backs away from this claim and says she was at a frat house tailgate party and I just wave at her to stop, I’ve heard enough and the outcome is the same, she got a ticket. At this point I am already exhausted by everything that has happened, my food and coffee are gone, I just want to pay the bill and sink into the leather seat of my wonderful car and get the fuck out of there. We do.
After stopping by her dorm and wasting more time for her to change, which she didn’t have time to do earlier, we finally get on our way back to my camper to pick up the dogs and start our scenic drive. We again make a gallant attempt on the way to be pleasant and save the day. It doesn’t work very well and by the time we arrive at the camper we have suffered most of the way in silence. We load the dogs in the car and I am so flustered and discombobulated that I make a mistake that almost cost me my dogs’ lives. In our haste to leave, and because I still am not used to my new car and its automated lift gate, I drive away with the tailgate open. We drive only about a mile to the small roadside “pumpkin patch” that I had seen days before and had already planned as our first stop, but when we got out and I realized what I had done and the possible consequences it could have had, I stood there in a dazed, stunned silence. The dogs just sat there looking at me like “WTF Mom?” With the shorter cargo space now in the back and my new car being much lower to the ground than the Tahoe, one or both of them could have easily tumbled to the roadway and been hit and killed by a car behind me, or at the very least, seriously injured. A huge bullet had been dodged, and I thanked the Universe above.
I closed the lift gate, breathed a serious sigh of relief, looked at my daughter like “yeah, I’m a fucking idiot”, rolled my eyes and turned my attention to the lovely roadside pumpkin and squash display that the homeowners had lovingly put together. The previous horrible moment then passed and I thought FINALLY we could put all the shittiness behind us. I started snapping some great pics of Morgan by the display, we were picking out and commenting on the various pumpkins and their shapes and colors, and soon the mood lifted again. We heard voices and were soon joined by the mother of the homeowners, who was visiting from CA, and her grandson. Morgan took a few photos of them with the woman’s cell phone, I paid for our pumpkins in the honor jar, and by this time the whole family had come outside. I talked briefly to the ladies and thanked them for giving their proceeds to a hurricane relief family, and said I would much rather get my pumpkins from them instead of the overpriced ones at the grocery store. Morgan and I then jumped back into the car. My spirit rejuvenated, I sat for a moment in the driveway watching the parents play with their children, the dad chasing the older boy around the yard, just watching life happen. I then picked up my camera and started snapping pics of them. They were oblivious and paying no attention to us. “Mom, you’re being seriously creepy right now”, Morgan blurted out. Again hurt and insulted, I turned and gave her a very annoyed look. “How am I possibly being creepy? I’m documenting these peoples’ lives; look at them, just being happy on a Sunday afternoon. I’m capturing art; it’s what a photographer does. And I think if I ever came back and left the photos in their mailbox they would be seriously happy I captured their lives in a moment of pure bliss, so piss off.” And with that I started the car, backed out of the driveway, and promptly and completely gave up on any further notion of having any sort of the nice day that I had looked forward to for over a week with my own child. Yep, I left that silly idea once and for all in those nice peoples’ driveway, just dropped it off like a piece of forgotten luggage at the airport and drove away. It just wasn’t going to happen, nope, not today.
After that we stopped briefly at a therapy horse center for me to get their phone number for a possible volunteer opportunity for myself in the future, then we saw a sign for an artist’s open house and sale and popped in on a very nice and talented artist lady, with whom we chatted for a bit before once again continuing on our way. Coming upon a public open space park, we stopped to let the dogs have a potty break, then we drove on in back to Fort Collins. It was just slightly before 5 pm. My original plan had been to take my daughter and I out for sushi to celebrate and wrap up the day, and then maybe watch the Broncos game together if she was up for it, but now my only thought was to just drop her back at her dorm and basically commence not speaking to her for at least a week, as my annoyance had only grown with her throughout the day instead of diminishing. I wasn’t about to reward her behavior with sushi.
As we passed a new park in Fort Collins that I had not seen yet, and because there was still some delicious photographic sunlight left, I decided to stop one last time and take some more photos. As Morgan complained about pushing Bella’s dog stroller thru the grass and questioned why we were going this way instead of staying on the easier sidewalk, I once again gritted my teeth and explained that I wanted to make our way over to this fabulous, magnificent tree that sat smack in the middle of the park. I have a thing for trees, and this one was perfectly shaped and the sun was coming through it just right. Jack, our bigger dog, started his antics, hamming for the camera and rolling in the grass, and Bella the pug just always looks so damn cute in her stroller, so soon I was snapping away again and the shots were gorgeous. I again momentarily forgot my annoyance at my daughter and the moment brought me to tears. It was a perfect fall day, the sun was setting, there was a peewee football game going on on one side of us, some goofy guys playing croquet on the other side of us, and me, my daughter, and our dogs were all together under a perfect tree. This is why I had become a photographer when I was 12 years old, and this is what the earlier artist and I had been expounding upon. She had perfectly understood, as she had explained her plein art technique to me, the nuances of capturing a fading moment before it was gone, never to come again. Like never being able to step in the same river twice, you can go back and do something similar to what you did in the past, but it will never be exactly the same thing. And even at the tender age of 12 years old, I was able to grasp the realization that moments pass, and if you don’t do something to capture and remember them, they will forever be forgotten and/or unrealized by yourself and others. I remember as a child this making me profoundly very sad, as I never wanted anything to be forgotten or left behind. I wanted every piece of my life to be documented in photographs from then on.
I turned away from my daughter and wiped my tears. “Let’s get going now”, I said, and we made our way back to the car. At her dorm finally, I gave her a quick hug, told her I was sorry for my part in the day going south, and quickly departed. What happened next was nothing short of Divine Intervention on the Universe’s part, and because I firmly believe there are no accidents, I know it was the Universe’s intention that I witness every single bit of it to teach me a greatly needed lesson.
I had meant to pee while I was at my daughter’s dorm, but because campus police frowned upon parking, even momentarily, in the bike lane on the street, I thought better of it and left, telling myself I would stop at the first available gas station or 7 Eleven. Being distracted by my thoughts and stuck in the middle lane of southbound College Ave., I missed several opportunities to stop and relieve myself. When I finally came to and got over into the far right lane, I spotted a McDonald’s up ahead and put my blinker on. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I would never willingly stop at a McDonald’s unless I had a damn good reason to. I haven’t eaten their food for decades, am against everything they stand for, and consider them to be a super sized enemy of all that is right and good. So again, I completely know that it was The Universe that decided to press extra hard on my bladder right at that moment and say, “You will stop here right now because you must bear witness to what is about to happen”.
As I was turning into McDonald’s, my attention was suddenly drawn to a small group of people huddled on the narrow median in the middle of the street. As quickly as I had the thought, “What the hell are they doing crossing the street right there?”, my eyes were drawn to the older woman amongst them. She was sobbing, no, wailing, uncontrollably, and the older man, most probably her husband, was holding her up, as her knees had buckled underneath her. I pulled into a parking spot, my eyes riveted upon them. In one horrifying instant, I understood exactly what I was looking at. As the traffic whirled oblivious around them, and people bustled oblivious by me going into Micky D’s to get their coffees and Big Macs, The Universe had made damn fucking sure that I had pulled into this parking lot at this exact moment, to witness the grief of the family and friends of the young man who had lost his life in the motorcycle accident on Friday the 13th, 2 days prior. 30 seconds before or after, and I would have missed it. And had I not picked up that passenger on Friday and he not told me about the accident, I would never have known about it. How I instantly knew that this was what I was watching, I cannot tell you, but it was all part of the Universe’s plan to kick me in the teeth. I watched as this mother wanted to stand in the exact spot where her son had spent his last moments on Earth, and I just completely fucking lost it. Tears poured down my face and I covered my mouth in horror at what I was witnessing. It was a surreal scene, as if out of a movie, and it was for me alone to see.
As they led her finally across to my side of the street, where they stood for several more minutes and she made no attempt to compose herself, she was just lost in her grief, I wanted so badly to run to her, to wrap my arms around her and tell her that I felt her pain, but I didn’t want to intrude on their very private public moment, nor to embarrass them, so I refrained. Instead I stayed in my car with my own grief and shame over how I had acted towards my daughter all day, how annoyed and angry I had been with her over stupid shit that could have been much, MUCH worse, and what a selfish piece of shit I had been to let my own expectations and perceptions ruin the day, not her.
The family eventually got the mother into their truck, and they drove away. When I was finally able to compose myself, I did the same. How I made it home in my daze I don’t know, but when I finally closed the door on the sanctuary in my beloved tiny vintage trailer, I collapsed on the floor on Jack’s bed with he and Bella, clutched them to me and just heaved great sobs until I could cry no more. Everything from the past couple of weeks, all the horror of all of the tragedies just came pouring out of me where I had been holding it all in, and the great preciousness of how very delicate Life is was hammered into me once more. Whenever I get too smug and think I KNOW this, and therefore don’t have to LIVE IT anymore, and I can preach it to others, it is guaranteed that The Universe will come ‘round and knock me upside the head with it again. My only 2 prayers tonight? One was of gratitude for not losing my daughter or my dogs today or yesterday, and grateful for the tiny, beautiful life I have, and the other prayer was one of sorrow and pain for everyone who has lost their lives in the hurricanes, the floods, the fires, and the Las Vegas shooting. But mostly it was for that mother, standing on a median in the middle of a busy street on a perfect fall day in Colorado, mourning not just the loss of her son, but mourning the loss of her own life that will now never be the same, along with everything that will now not ever come to pass because he is gone. In that moment I became her, I felt the raw emotion of her pain, and it rocked me to my core. It struck fear into my heart as a parent, and you find yourself bargaining with God or the Devil, you don’t know which and you don’t care, to please, PLEASE never let me know what it is like to lose a child. Please PLEASE let my children long outlive me, and please PLEASE let the natural order of life be fulfilled in my own family, as we bear witness as a society to so many that are not afforded this luxury. I stared at the new, beautiful little pumpkin sitting on my counter that I had purchased earlier that afternoon and thought of all of the children and men and women that will never see another fall or pumpkin in their lives because those lives were cut short by a natural disaster or a madman or just a simple, horrible mistake.
Please cherish your life. Please love your children every moment, not just when they are making you proud. Please realize what you have before it is taken away, and mostly just shut the fuck up and stop complaining and be happy before you’re dead, because you will be all too soon. Be kind. Help others. Give what you have to give. Be generous with your time, your love, and your money. Please live a day of life every day. Thank you for reading one of mine.
(Side Note: When I finally recovered from my day, I looked up the accident on the City of Fort Collins’ website; it was a single vehicle accident. The young man had changed lanes on his motorcycle, miscalculated, hit the median, and then fallen to the pavement, hitting his head. It was just a horrible, tragic misstep that cost him his life. It happened around noon on Friday the 13th, right there by the McDonald’s. He was 24 years old).
