Invincible
There was this thing I did with my best friend when we were in high school. It was pretty stupid and really dangerous, but nothing happened, so I guess I can talk about it openly now (sorry mom!).
We were 16, newly licensed, and hungry for adventure. We decided to try something crazy and fun, crazy-fun. We drove to Reno, alone, at 16 years old to… to what? We hadn’t really thought it out, but we made the two hour drive, arrived, wandered around Circus Circus for a few hours, made eye contact with cute boys, then realized that we weren’t old enough to really do anything — we couldn’t even get a hotel room for the night — so we drove home. It was a long drive, we were tired, and we realized that we’d need a pretty good excuse for returning to either of our homes at that time of night, so we pulled off at a rest stop, locked the doors, rolled blankets up in the windows, and slept until morning.
When I think of this now, as a parent of two daughters, one of whom gives me serious sinking gut feelings when I imagine her as a teenager, I almost can’t breathe. God, what if one of my daughters did that? What if she took that risk? Put herself in that danger? And I didn’t even know it? It terrifies me. (Again, so, so sorry mom!)
I thought about that trip this week. Two high school friends experienced the loss of their spouses this week. Two women my age are now widows. That was a shock to my system. And just today, another friend lost her mom unexpectedly. I am devastated for all three of them.
And here’s the thing I realized: losing my husband seems impossible. Losing my mother seems impossible. It feels so distant, so in the future that I can’t fathom it. We live every day like it’s just another day, especially right now with three young kids. It feels like we are so in the moment that there is no future — no tomorrow — just scurrying around putting toys back on shelves and cleaning up messes and brushing teeth and combing hair and driving to and from, dropping off and picking up, brushing teeth again and tucking into bed. It’s an endless, mindless list of tasks.
That night we drove to Reno, we had no fear. We were invincible. There was no ambiguous future to be worried about. It was just that moment. And right now, it’s just this moment. It feels as though everything will always be like this, and isn’t that what it really is to feel invincible?
But three friends lost their forever people, and suddenly, jarringly, I realized that could be me. We are not invincible. This moment is not forever.
At times, when I feel so low, that thought is comforting. This is not forever. When the house is a disaster and construction projects have long gone unfinished and the girls are screaming at each other and the baby is wailing and dinner is burning and the laundry is endless I think, This is not forever and I’m calmed. But then again, I see a chubby thumb-sucking baby and a little girl with little curls and a clever seven-year old making puns and a smart, handsome man with his arm around my waist and I think, This is not forever and again, I can’t breathe.
We are not invincible. Not invincible. Invincible.
Inspired by the book Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, I assign my American Studies students 26 short pieces of creative nonfiction over the course of the year, each entry titled with the next letter of the alphabet. My hope is that they will develop a collection of personal stories they can mine for ideas when we work on personal (college) essays at the end of the year. In an effort to practice what I preach, I’m following along with their Ordinary Life Project.
Michelle Balmeo 