Freeway Episode a Reminder to Give Thanks

Friday, December 4, 2009

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Freeway Episode a Reminder to Give Thanks

By J’AMY PACHECO

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.

—Meister Eckhart

The intended spirit of Thanksgiving Day is a good one. It’s grown from a holiday during which we celebrate a successful harvest to one on which we often reflect on the things for which we are thankful away from the dinner table—family, friends, good health, a home, employment, or that this year’s expected canned pumpkin shortage didn’t materialize.

It sometimes seems almost cliché to list the things for which we are thankful. We are a society of plenty, and I admit that I tend to think more about what time the turkey needs to go in the oven than I do about things for which I should be grateful.

This year, my 50th birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day. We celebrated with friends at Disneyland, where everybody was especially nice to me and where I was able to do some very cool things I’ve never done before. We fed our children pizza and pasta for Thanksgiving dinner—but one child did notice that the juice box from which she drank contained apples from…Turkey! That was good enough for us.

The spirit of Thanksgiving sort of got lost as we spent Friday and Saturday preparing for and holding a yard sale in anticipation of our upcoming move. Sunday, however, I made an enormous pan of apple-raisin dressing; we dressed up and headed for a belated family Thanksgiving dinner in Los Angeles.

We were only about 15 minutes from home when our trip came to a halt. A car in front of us and one lane over ran over a drive shaft that had apparently been left on the freeway. The impact threw the drive shaft under our car, where it made the most horrendous noise I’ve ever heard in a motor vehicle.

Thanks to a stream of recreational vehicles whose drivers didn’t want to let us over, it took a few minutes to pull off the side of the freeway to assess the damage. The car that initially hit the drive shaft pulled over, as did another car behind us who also got hit.

My husband got out to check the damage. As he closed the door, I remarked that I smelled gasoline. A second later, my husband threw open the door and ordered us out of the car. The drive shaft had punctured our fuel tank.

My 13-year-old daughter had showered just before we left, and jumped out with damp hair and wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt and ballet-type slippers. None of us thought to grab our coats, so we leapt out into 50-some degree weather near the top of the Cajon Pass and hurried through the tumbleweeds that covered the shoulder.

My daughter shivered from cold as we surveyed the car from a distance. My husband called the Automobile Club while I called the emergency operator.

Once we determined the car was not going to explode, my husband went back and grabbed my daughter’s coat. We phoned a friend who lives nearby, and her husband plucked my daughter and me off the freeway while my husband conversed with the responding firefighters and waited for a tow truck.

We spent the rest of the afternoon picking stickers out of our shoes, socks and pants—and thanking our lucky stars that it was our faithful Toyota that was on life support, and not any of us.

As events unfolded, we responded to them with speed. Nobody got emotional. But that night, having had time to reflect upon what might have happened with one ill-timed spark, I was afraid to go to sleep for fear of seeing an alternate reality in my nightmares.

That didn’t happen, but as the ensuing days have brought more information to light as to what happened under the car, it has made me see with crystal clarity just how lucky my family was, and continues to be.

At a time when so many are out of work, losing their homes, suffering from ill health and facing an uncertain future, we have been okay. We have good health, have food for our table, and will soon have a new roof over our heads. And the gas tank upon which our beloved daughter sat didn’t blow up.

I can’t help seeing the event as a reminder to not only take the time to express gratitude for what we have—and for what we haven’t lost—but to also do everything we can to help others not so fortunate. In a split second, our lives might have changed, but they didn’t.

For that, I could not be more thankful.