Half a Second

The "blink of an eye" is a common metaphor for something that happens suddenly. However, the metaphor is limited. Our eyes blink in about 4/10ths of a second -- really fast -- and blinking is governed by the autonomic nervous system; it's part of the everyday, like breathing. It happens to all of us. So, eye blinking doesn't fit all kinds of sudden situations; it's not descriptive of the sort of suddenness involved in awakening to your life, opening your mind and realizing where you are and what's happening all around you.

Yesterday, a dear friend of the family was killed in a car accident. Kevin was only a few years older than my husband. He had six children under the age of 10 and a stay-at-home wife who was in D's class at school. He followed in my father-in-law's footsteps when D wasn't inclined to; he worked his way to partner in Bob's orthodontic practice. His children were in the SUV when it collided with a delivery truck; apparently Kevin had crossed the median. What was he doing -- changing the radio station? talking on the cell phone? even checking his blackberry? Probably something we all do from time to time. The children, while injured, are alive; I don't want to imagine what his wife is going through or how we will help her. I'm sure the crash happened in the blink of an eye, but what happened next -- rushing the children and the other driver to area hospitals, notifying his wife and others, the phone call D received and his grief and shock -- all these things are sudden, but lingering; shocking, but requiring time to absorb and process. They are the things you believe never will happen to you, things that change your life forever. So much more than the blink of an eye.

When I'm holding Abigail, and she is looking up at me with her gorgeous blue eyes as if she is memorizing my face, I feel the abruptness, and permanence, of her arrival in my life. Out of nowhere, here she is. Though I spent all those months growing her inside me, experiencing so much physical and emoional trauma, I can't help but feel surprised. One moment she was not here, and now she is. A new person has entered our lives, by our own doing, and she will be one of the central preoccupations of our lives from now on, as we watch her learn to sit up, crawl, walk, write, drive, do calculus, express vulnerability, become her individual self. It's all so sudden. I fear that it will be over in the blink of an eye.