Somewhere in Wales…
The dust settles first, and a quiet hangs above the intersection where the cars collided, before anyone moves, before anyone speaks. Our car faces 180 degrees away from the direction it had been going only seconds before. Slowly, we look up, and friendly strangers on the sidewalk take their first steps toward us, toward the scene, to check for injuries, to help people from the cars.
*
Only days before, I stood in Dawn‘s kitchen in Wales, in beautiful, serene, perfect Wales. She reached for the white sage bundle that she keeps beside her sink and lit it patiently with a lighter. A slow burn flared. She suggested this cleansing ritual after I told her of the Indian curse I felt clinging to my skin and the creepy feeling that followed me around after an Indian man shared incomprehensible mutterings with me that were laced with some of my deepest fears. I told her of my timely nosebleeds. Dawn told me the smoke from the white sage is meant to be cleansing and rid an individual of negative energy and – in my case – creepy, pervy feelings that something bad is going to happen. Dawn waved the smoking sage bundle around me and said a prayer for me, a prayer in the form of kind words and clean thoughts and well wishes. I did my best to open my mind but I still felt the slimy fingers of worry gripping me tightly. I hoped with all the hope I had that this would work, that suddenly I would feel better. I waited.
A couple of days later, I was reunited with my sister-friend Anna in Copenhagen. We spent our time together eating her homemade mint and cocoa date treats, soaking our feet in warm water and watching chick flicks, attending African weddings and trying the new raw food restaurant in the city center. Our time together was happy, soul-healing, and warm – in the true sense of the Danish word, hyggeligt: cozy. I couldn’t have been happier. On my last day in Copenhagen, I packed up my things and we loaded everything into her car. Her husband George drove, she sat in the passenger seat, and I sat in the backseat behind the driver. We were headed to her parents’ home where we would share lunch together, play with their daughter (where she’d spent the last couple of days), and then I would catch a train to Aalborg to visit my Danish family.
George had just pulled out of their parking spot and began down the road. I shuffled about in my seat and adjusted my bag and belongings before I managed to do my seatbelt up.
*
“Do you drive standard?” the man asked me.
It was the end of January. The snow was compact and crunchy on the sidewalks and the winter air bit. It was the beginning of my year off from school, and I had just arrived in Winnipeg where I would remain for a month before I left for India. Within a couple of days at home, I decided to conquer one of my biggest irrational fears and visit a psychic. I went with my friend Chantel. She had seen this psychic before and assured me it was meant to be fun and that even if he says something that catches me off guard, his word is not meant to be gospel but to get me thinking. I was okay with that. Plus I trusted her, and I didn’t think she would lead me down a dark, empty tunnel.
“You’re going to travel again,” he had told me. This was one of the first things he told me and just in that way. Not only was I going to travel, but I was doing so again. Without being prompted in any way, he had picked up on some pretty key parts of my life, travel decidedly being one of them.
He told me he saw me with a friend in a car, and then he asked me if I drive standard. “No,” I answered, and he returned with a thoughtful, “Hmmm. That will be interesting.”
Dawn and I had loads of plans for the road trips we would take when I visited her after my time in India. We’d talked for months about spending time together so it was inevitable that these plans were already in place (at least in my mind if nowhere else). After hearing the words from the psychic and knowing how touch and go her health can be, I immediately thought that something would happen to her while we were driving around Wales, and I’d be forced to struggle with a stick shift… on the other side of the road no less.
*
Anna picked me up from the airport in Copenhagen. She’d had a late night with her daughter, and I’d had a late night packing and an early morning flight from Manchester, so when I saw her at the arrivals gate, hair pulled back, glasses and sweatpants on, we both agreed that a nap would be divine. We drove home, but first, we stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few things – carrots for juicing and some other healthy tidbits.
We waited at the green light before taking a lefthand turn into the grocery store parking lot. Several cars zipped by, preventing our turn. The light turned yellow, and Anna inched forward, establishing the turn we would make. Another car approached the intersection, and given the light had already turned yellow, it was time for him to stop, or at least think about stopping. But he didn’t. Instead he continued on, without even slowing, and by then, the light was completely red. Anna had continued to advance her lefthand turn, but I watched this oncoming car, suspicious and on high alert for such activity. While Anna was confidently entering the other side of the street on the turn, I said, “Watch Anna. This guy…” or something like that. When we think we are about to be in an accident, how clear and descriptive are we, really?”
Sure enough, the guy flew past us and shot us a glare that suggested we were wholly in the wrong. Meanwhile, the light had turned red; he should have stopped, and we should have been permitted to go. Neither Anna nor I understood what had just happened, but I understood one thing. If there had been an accident, it would have been the front passenger side that would have been hit: precisely where I was sitting.
*
Dawn and I spent a few brilliant days touring Wales. As we drove, my thoughts periodically went to the psychic who had seen me in a car with a friend. Vague though this image may seem to some, it is entirely appropriate given the circumstances, particularly because I otherwise never cruise around in a car with anyone. For me, this vision was a direct hit. With that bullseye came the curiosity about why my inability to drive standard would be interesting.
We all know that driving is dangerous – for anyone who has a fear of flying, it is this statistical danger that we often employ to remind us of the improved chances of safety whilst traveling by air. Yes, getting in a car is risky. And while driving around with Dawn was wonderfully good fun, it was, danger and safety-wise, uneventful… for the most part. There was one time I can remember when we flew so quickly out of one street onto another without realizing it had been a merge, and we should have slowed. We were fortunate there had been no other cars coming or it would have been a guaranteed accident. There was one other time I can remember thinking we were lucky to have escaped unscathed, but I don’t remember the exact details. Dawn and I managed to giggle our nerves away from each of these cases, but my thoughts lingered on what could have happened after she’d returned to the road and the destination before us. I wondered if this was what the psychic had seen…
Thankfully, nothing happened when I was on the road with Dawn. Our days together were packed full of laughs and pictures and movies and secrets and tasty grub. I was full to the brim with love and joy.
*
Still three months later, I can run my hand along the lump and the bruise on my right shin. The headache and bump on my head from the rattling I experienced subsided in the days and weeks that followed, but this leg bump is a constant reminder.
We were only two blocks from Anna’s apartment; I won’t apologize for not having my seatbelt on yet. How many times do you leave the house unbuckled? How many times do you get in the back of a cab and forget to buckle up altogether? How many times do you cruise a couple blocks in a friend’s car while you shift and settle and finish tapping in a text message? Maybe you’re a shining example of the perfect seatbelt user, but I’ll wager a guess that every once in a while, you go even a meter without your seatbelt done up.
It was then that (just like in the movies) everything slowed down. George approached the intersection, just as Anna and I had done when we went to the grocery store, only this time, we were the ones going straight through, and there was someone facing us, waiting to turn left. The light turned yellow. We were just on that cusp of intersection decision awkwardness – slam on the breaks and skid to a halt? or milk the yellow a bit and squeeze through just a tad too late? George chose to squeeze. As we did, I kept my eye on the car waiting to turn left, fully aware that I wasn’t buckled in, fully aware that it would be too late if I needed to be. The car advanced and stopped, having noticed us. There was a hesitation – from both of us? from just the other driver? And I remember thinking as it happened, as the other car then began to move forward once again, “Why are you going? You saw us.”
We slipped through the intersection, and just as we did so, the other driver accelerated to make her turn. I watched it happen very slowly – it was all painfully clear. A million and one thoughts flashed through my mind.
First, before we even collided, and I knew we were going to, I told myself, “Just relax. It will be worse if you don’t relax. Just try to go with it.” I thought of stories of babies dropped or falling from horrible heights but who survive all the same because they don’t realize they are falling and are limp the whole time. Adults tense and brace so much that they inflict injury upon themselves.
Then, the moment of impact. The turning car struck us, and I was sent through the air. My flight felt unending. I wondered when it would stop. I reminded myself to stay relaxed. My leg struck the console between the two front passengers. My head hurtled against the ceiling, and I thought I might die.
Those thoughts entered my mind. In all that, I thought about dying. It didn’t frighten me in that moment. I had time for a lot of thinking while I flew through the air in the backseat, but I didn’t have time for fear. I just remember being hyper aware of the windows on my left and right, and as I soared, I thought I was looking at death for sure if I managed to meet a window. I felt I would be ejected or critically injured at least. Still, I reminded myself to relax.
Then it all stopped.
And then, there we were, sitting in the car, facing the wrong way. Anna’s first reaction was to laugh. I’ve always marvelled at how one of the first reactions of shock is to laugh. She managed to sputter, “Were we in a car accident?” You see, she had been reading, her head down, and she observed none of this. I sat, dumb, mute, lost. Anna turned around to look at me. When she saw my face, she reached back, and we held hands for a minute. Shortly after, the strangers arrived from the sidewalk where they witnessed our accident. One of them tried to help me get out of the car. He struggled with the door, and I floated up outside of my body and looked down on myself. I could see myself trapped in the car, like a animal in a glass cage, confused and desperate, eager to escape. I fumbled with the latch and pawed at the glass, unable to think, and then one of the kind strangers thought to help me from the other backseat door. Shaking, I grabbed his hand and he helped me out. As I made my way to the sidewalk, away from the scene of the accident, I turned around to see the car and understood why I was unable to get out through my door. The damage had been concentrated to one spot on the car: the backseat where I had been sitting.
*
I don’t know why this happened… there were a lot of questions floating between George, Anna and me after the accident, a lot of tears, and a lot of surrender. Sometimes I think this was a wakeup call for me. Putting on my seatbelt is the first thing I do when I get in a car now. I think back to the psychic, and I wonder if he had crossed images – of Dawn and me flying around Wales in her car, and of a collision in Denmark. Sometimes I think the icky feeling that had been following me from India was this, and that I was just meant to be jolted. Yet, I can’t help but think about the feelings of anxiety I had before I even encountered that man in the rest stop, the ones that told me very clearly that something was going to happen to me. Even though there were three of us in the car, when I look at the photograph of the damage, I see that the incident was focused on my door. When I think about all this, I can only hope that this was it, that there is no more. I remember thinking that I would be lucky to make it home alive at the end of the trip, and to be perfectly honest, I do feel that way. I’m grateful for all my experiences in India and all the places that followed, but more than anything, I’m overjoyed to be home. All this considered, I won’t stop traveling. I never will. But the accident, which somehow I feel was a shadow of what it could have been had it not been for Dawn’s cleansing ritual and her strong, positive energy, has forced me to step back and take a deep breath… to look at travel in a different light.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Please find me on Facebook, twitter and Instagram so we can be friends and share some positive energy!
