Mendolonium

When I first moved to Pasadena from Nebraska thirteen years ago I was not a very adept city driver.  One of my biggest failings was in spotting pedestrians.  You see in my small town in Nebraska nobody walked anywhere.  Perhaps you might see some pre-teen kids walking out on the side of the road or someone out for a jog, but if we needed to go somewhere we got in the car.  Despite what the song “Walking in LA” might lead you to believe, lots of folks walk in Pasadena and during my first couple of months here it was sheer luck combined with Jeff shouting at me from the passenger seat that I didn’t hit any of them.  I was never taught in driver’s ed to look for people walking across the street and doing so wasn’t second (or third, or fourth…) nature for me.  Thankfully, it didn’t take long for me to develop the instinct to always look out for pedestrians before I made a turn and now ,more than a decade later, I am  more often one of those pedestrians myself rather than a driver.

Today was an unusual day.  Tuesdays are work days for me and I headed into the office this morning planning to leave early to go to a doctor’s appointment in Santa Monica this afternoon.  Santa Monica is “only” a 25 mile drive from Pasadena but that doesn’t mean much in Los Angeles traffic particularly when it involves the dreaded 405 freeway.  I make the trip every eight weeks to see most fabulous rheumatoligist around but I was dreading it today.  Rain was pouring down from the sky and I had an odd sense of foreboding.  I used to commute 30 miles each way, every day, to and from work but today such a drive felt reckless to me somehow.   I kept thinking about rain soaked pavement, vehicles skidding to a halt, and the sound of cars slamming together.  I stopped at home in between work and my doctor’s appointment, saw the boys, and decided to call and cancel.  The office was very understanding and scheduled me in an open slot for tomorrow morning.  I had had a productive morning and already finished up everything I needed to do at work for the day so on Jeff’s suggestion I stayed home and played hooky.  It was quite lovely.  I nursed the baby before for his afternoon and opted to simply hold him rather than put him down.  We snoozed together in the rocking chair for an hour or so.  I savored the feeling of his warm body curled around mine like a comma, exhaling sweet milky breaths of happiness.  When he woke up I found Thomas and the three of us baked chocolate chip cookies together in our warm kitchen – giving Henry his first taste of chocolate chip cookie dough – much to his lip-smacking delight.  I called my little sister to find she was a work at a new gig – waitressing at a little pizza place in Silver Lake.  After I hung up with her Jeff suggested we all trek over to say “hi” and get pizza.  It was pouring rain and I reiterated my aversion to driving in this weather when Jeff said, “I thought we should take the train.”  Again I thought of the pouring rain, but Jeff, certainly the more spontaneous one in our relationship was undeterred.  The boys were still in their sleepers and long underwear from the previous night; along with jackets they would be perfectly warm, he countered.  We could put them in the stroller with the rain cover, Jeff could wear a raincoat and push said stroller, and I could bundle up and use an umbrella and sling the baby if necessary.  I couldn’t really argue with such a well thought out plan and I do love pizza and my sister so off we went.  We were rewarded with the sight of our second double rainbow (one nested inside the other) in the space of a week.  We rode the gold line; little old ladies exclaiming in Spanish at the beauty of our two blue eyed, long eyelashed boys.  Henry beamed at every new person who got on the train and and Thomas vibrated with excitement in his seat.  I was reminded of all the good things about living in the city.  At Union station we took a few minutes to show Thomas around the magnificent Art Deco building.  We then hopped on the red line and out to Silver Lake.  It was a long trip; the Los Angeles metro is not particularly well laid out nor efficient but a good time was had by all.  And then on the short walk from the metro station to the pizza joint it happened;  the screech of tires, the sound of metal slamming into metal.  I looked up to see a solid red light at the intersection we were approaching and then a car run said light smack into another car making a left hand turn.  Both cars had seen the accident coming and hit on the brakes; preventing any major damage or injury.  I offered my name and phone number to both parties as a witness – writing it out in the crayons that I carry in my diaper bag.  I offered my cell phone to the girl who had run the red light.  She was in shock.  She didn’t appear intoxicated; she hadn’t been on her cell phone.  She had just made a mistake.  She knew the accident was her fault and was cursing herself, her dead cell phone battery, her purse with her driver’s license in it that she had left at home.  The other woman involved was shaking with fright and kept looking at my Henry to the carseat in her own car saying “I am so glad my baby wasn’t with me.”  I was so very glad we hadn’t been in the middle of the intersection.  If the accident had happened thirty seconds later the red light runner might have plowed into our little family and I found myself feeling sick at the thought.  I thought that driving in the rain was unsafe, but I forget how vulnerable we all really are no matter where we are or how we choose to get there.

I supose all we can do is to do our best to be safe and try to be kind to one another.  It felt good to help the two women in need; both the one who ran the red light and the one who was hit.  As I left I told them both “Good luck,” and that I hoped tomorrow was a better day for them.  Perhaps I made a very bad night for them a little easier.  And tonight when the baby wakes up and needs me to help him fall back asleep I won’t mind so much; instead I will hold him tight to me and be grateful that life has been good to us.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 12:57 am and is filed under The Family Mendolo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.