Feeling Pretty Lucky

Friday afternoon was hot and dry, the sun glinting off the windshield of the occasional car that passed me on Route 23, a rural country road west of Oneonta. I was thinking about all of the details of our closing and worried that something would go wrong—a missing document, an overlooked financial detail—that would prevent us from securing the mortgage and our house.

Behind the wheel, I am observant, always keeping on eye out for deer and, during these last weeks since the flood, road damage, so I immediately noticed when the white Buick in the oncoming lane swerved over the double yellow line. The driver seemed to regain control and moved back into her lane, but as she drew closer, the car began drifting again. I moved as far over onto the shoulder as I could without going into the ditch, but the car kept coming, taking off my side-view mirror and wiping out the back half of the driver's side. The impact blew my tire and spun the car sideways until I landed on a small bank on the other side of the road. The other car went off the road and into a field.

When I climbed from my car, I started thinking about our closing and how this could not be happening and then I stopped myself. I was not hurt and that was all that mattered. And it really is all that matters. My husband and I have been spinning in circles of worry and fear for months, and I am through. There is only so much we can control and we have to let everything else go. I am tired of making myself sick with worry, and not enjoying my life because I am afraid. Afraid of what? Finances? Money? That is just stupid.

The other driver, an 86-year-old woman on her way home from the grocery store, was not hurt either. In the police report, she says that she doesn't remember the accident. The State Trooper thinks she fell asleep. He commended me on my driving and avoiding a head-on collision. Had we hit head on at 55 miles an hour, I cannot say what might have happened.

So now we are without a car and our closing is scheduled for Wednesday but everything is fine. We will get through this and everything else. For someone who constantly plans for the worst scenario, I hadn't realized until Friday that the worst possible scenario is something I don't even want to consider.