thoughts on ice
these are some things that were going through my head monday after sitting in traffic for about an hour and a half on my way to work. orginally posted on another message board preceded by the lyrics to the beatles "i'm so tired" because i was so tired ...
there was just something wrong about the silence and gloom last night. i laid there for an hour. okay, so what? that's normal for me to take an hour or more to fall asleep. but i could not close my eyes. i got up. trundled down the stairs, in the dark, went to the kitchen, got a glass of water, lugged myself back up, in the dark. it was so cold, and i could smell ice and smoke in the air, that rich, tangy smell of wood smoke rising up through sooty chimnies. i hate cold. i hate the ache in my hands and the gloom, even on the bright days like today ended up being. winter never used to be so harsh on me. wonder what it's had against me these last few years. must be the tropical blood in me -- my grandfather is filipino. but i wrapped myself up in a blanket and poked my nose into another world until about two thirty when i decided getting through the work day on nothing but caffeine was probably not a good idea. things still felt wrong. my husband was sleeping in the bed for the first time in three days, and he had flipped and flopped himself into a little ball in the middle of the bed. how a six foot three man curls like that, i still can't figure. but at least that part of the bed was warm.
woke up to my 6:00 alarm thinking i ought to give myself another day of bedrest, just to make sure whatever pet virus i had was really dead and gone, but by six thirty i was dragging my ass out of bed going no can't miss any more work. damn my sense of duty.
shoulda listened to that bad omen feeling of after midnight silence creeping up my back like that. looked like a light snow had fallen over night. stuck to the cars and the tops of the buildings, and that was about it. had to gently gently coax my key into the lock and turn it carefully so as not to twist it like i did once before. thought the door handle was gonna break off i had to yank so hard. my hands, bundled up, were already hurting. gah, i wanna go back to bed. to make matters worse, i gotta feed my power steering leak. stupid piece of shit. i pop the hood but it doesn't pop very well. great. i had to take my gloves off to get my fingers under the hood to pry it up enough to open the damn thing. and that leak is so fucking thirsty i could stand there and give it a whole bottle and it wouldn't stop squealing. so now my fingers are killing me. one of ems got little red welts under it from touching the icy metal. have i mentioned i hate winter? i wanna move to phoenix. or new orleans. i can handle hurricanes. ice, not so much.
gloves back on i gotta scrape my damn windows. but the air is so still it doesn't feel so cold. then i realize what that bad feeling was. my tires slip a bit as i turn out onto church street. oh great. drving will be fun today.
i was fine for the first fifteen minutes and then all the cars stopped. shit. i saw five accidents and one TTA bus with a blown tire. i saw morons rushing up the shoulders on the over passes where all the ice was. fucking stupid. i just hung back, let em go. i'm not in a hurry. at least the heater in my piece of shit works. and the tape deck, sort of. i'm listening to the las. you know, the brit boys who originally did there she goes. good good stuff. that started at seven thirty. i got to work at ten to nine. yes, i was in traffic that long.
and all day, i sit there thinking about wrecks. and i'm so tired i can't tell how i've done the amount of work i've done. i think about my car spinning out, flipping over, breaking my bones, crushing me. unpleasant. i'm tired i want to go home. i eat on my 20 minute break so i can skip my lunch and work until five to get eight hours. fuck overtime today.
the worst one was at duke street, about halfway up the durham freeway. a car was upside down on the hood of another car. no ambulances. i don't know if anyone was hurt or killed and i don't wanna know. i don't wanna look. i hate car wrecks. i will always avert my eyes. always. i just wanna drive, get where i'm going. i don't understand why people gotta stop and stare. i guess it's just a "glad that ain't me" kinda thing.
well, one time it was.
i was fifteen. i hadn't even learned to drive yet. i think my mom was terrified of trying to teach me, since i was the oldest. she'd never taught a kid to drive, and i don't think she had any confidence in my ability to do so. we had gone up to annapolis maryland to watch a navy v. air force academy football game. my clearest memories of the game are the fly over of f-16s before the start -- i love airplanes, love flight, was in airforce jrotc at the time, wanted to a fighter pilot -- and the falcon that was the air force academy's mascot. didn't get to have him on my wrist but i saw him close up. fucking beautiful. i loved his eyes.
we were cruising down i-95 on the way back home. it was dark, i was half asleep. long day, long drive. suddenly i hear my step dad say oh shit.
you know those whirly kind of rides at fairs and stuff, the kind that spin and gravity pins you to the side but its all fun and games so you scream in glee? this felt like that. spinning, pinned in place by gravity -- pulling g's, like a fighter pilot. but those screams weren't glee. i wasn't even sure i was screaming. i felt air passing over my vocal cords, heard distant voices. what i really heard was glass breaking, metal crumpling like christmas wrapping paper, my mother screaming.
for me, it was impact that was the worst. i didn't feel any impact whatsoever, just the sensation of it. for years, in my nightmares, i felt the sensation of impact, heard glass crashing around my head, heard everyone screaming and yelling except me. i was an ineffectual screamer. just air over impotent flaps of tissue somewhere in the recesses of my throat. one night, i lay awake in my bed and listened to a car crash that i knew was not happening anywhere but my head. i was awake. i know that because it was a night i couldn't close my eyes like last night.
none of us were hurt, thank god or whoever for that. the really creepy part happened while my mom, my brother and i were sitting in the ambulance while my step dad talked to the cops outside. a volvo full of college students slowed down to take pictures of the crash. and they got rear ended for their trouble. that sound ... i went hot and cold and quivered.
so i don't wanna look, okay. nothing to see here move along.
and then there was the shape.
the afternoon that i graduated from college in may of 97 ended kinda overcast and humid as all fuck. 460 turned into a parking lot. there were helicopters, cops, ambulances, tow trucks, flat bed wreckers. took over an hour to get by that wreck, and when we did, i saw on a gurney at the back of an ambulance, a white sheet pulled up over a familiar shape.
so no, i don't wanna look.
i don't have crash dreams any more. i'm not skittish in traffic any more, unless i'm a passenger in a car being driven by a maniac, as my husband sometimes is. bastard he knows i hate that but it's like it's some competition. it's not fucking nascar, okay. if someone passes you, who the fuck cares? you are not safe at speed, no matter how taut you feel and wide open and reflexes on a hair trigger. no no, dear speed wants to kill you.
i'm so tired ...
i'm gonna go watch football.
