letter to myself about broken things

by erika

Dear Erika,

If the third time’s the charm, or if everything happens in threes, or if three’s really company, then I think you’re good on car accidents for the year. And yes, you feel lucky and grateful and blessed and oh, it could have been so much worse, and thank god! everyone is ok, and yes, it was the other guy’s fault, and he was driving a Saab and so now you have a good saab story…and and and…But then, because I know you, I know you start hearing Will Smith’s life coach theory about fault and responsibility and how it doesn’t matter whose fault it was, it is now your responsibility to deal with the residue. And you will, you are; you have amazing friends and family who will help get you from here to there, both literally and metaphorically. I’m not worried about that.

I’m not worried about anything really (except the polar bears), but I know you are. I wanted you to hear from me, me who survives this and many other accidents (of car, of son, of heart over the next twenty years), that I saw you shivering on the side of the road after they towed away that sweet little blue loaner Rabbit and I knew you weren’t cold, but in shock– in shock at your life and how things can feel so easily, so suddenly, towed away. And I’m here to tell you, it’s true. All of it, all of us, are part of life’s mysterious undertow. There is a strong current beneath our existence that moves in a different direction from that of the surface, and it hungers to take us out to sea.  As your first poet, Neruda, whispers,

“May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.”

Let go of where you think you should be heading and what car will get you there the safest, my 44-year old friend. Yes-go get your eyes checked and figure out how far things need to be now for you to really see them and how much you’ve lost up close. Go get your mammogram, your moles checked, your neck checked from this last crash, but release all your broken bits to the labor of the tides and try to trust. The car, that bracelet, the glass, your heart…

“So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway”

I love you, lady.

64-year old Erika, waving from the Schwinn blue ’65 Mustang