Lucky to Be Alive

There are times in ones life when a person collides with a dangerous situation and it isn't until after the hazard passes that they realize how lucky they are to be alive. When that happens a morbid understanding becomes frozen in your consciousness forever, along with the lesson you've learned from it. It was the late 80's and me and my sister were crammed in the very back seat of our Dad's tan Ford Taurus. Those old models seated 6, and in the far rear there was a seat that you had to pull up, something like the way you unfold a sofa sleeper. There was just enough room to fit one person or 2 small children and there were two seatbelts. The only way in or out of these seats was to open up the rear windowed hatch door, or climb over the seat. In the front seat were my Mother and brother and in the middle seat my older sister and my other two brothers.

We had just spent a day at a beach in Northern California. This beach wasn't the kind that you could walk down. A narrow winding road led to a parking area that belonged to a museum of Coastal Native American artifacts. We had just visited the exhibit and I was fascinated by the hand woven beautiful bowls in soft earth tones, and hand fashioned stone spears. My imagination transported me to a place where history wasn't present and the future nothing but a distant hope. There was no museum, only the sheer drop to the coastal bluff remained, and where the parking resided was nothing but fielded hillside leading to the beautiful view and craggy cliff edge. I was in this dreamland largely because I often blocked out the terrible realities and abuse of my actual existence, as young children often do. I must have been about 10 or 11 years old at the time; maybe a little younger. Dwelling in this never-world, I wasn't cognizant of my surroundings and was only thinking about warming my body against the chilly sea breezes and taking off my shoes to snuggle my feet into the soft heat of my just-worn jacket to wait for the heater to kick in.

Finally my mom had rounded up all of us and we loaded into the car -- me and my sister in the very rear end of it. My mom was getting ready to take off down what looked almost like the road we came in on; when my sister, a little over 3 years younger then me, started to scream.

"Stop, Stop! We're going to go into the water! We're gonna drown," she yelled.

Everybody accept for me didn't believe her. They wanted to just hurry up and drive. And were saying as much loudly to try and drown out our younger voices. I suggested that we check it out first and then no harm to foul. But in typical adult fashion of not wanting to be proven wrong by a minor, they weren't having it. My mom was getting ready to take off. My sister flung herself over the middle seat, and I seeing very real terror in her eyes, started to propel myself over with her. My siblings were trying to push us back, and we were causing such a ruckus that a fisherman that was walking by looked into the vehicle. He came over wondering what the problem was, and my younger sister shouted out her concerns.

"You were going to drive down that road?" he asked his face going ashen. "My God, he said! "That road is a boat ramp and leads straight into the ocean."

He then explained to us about how it was constructed for the ease of fishing boats, so they could just drive out into the water. He confirmed in short order, that if my mother had kept on her course we would have all drowned. As if to validate the fact, when we got out and walked a ways to inspect further, we could see the beginning of the swirling, tumultuous Northern California sea. My legs went weak with fear as I stared down at the water. I knew that I was only alive that day because of my younger sister and her persistence, coupled with the fact that I could see with just a look in her eyes that she was dead serious. That day after we were pointed in the right direction by the fisherman, I knew that we had been blessed with an uncanny stroke of luck. Nobody spoke as my mother navigated the twisting roads back to the main highway. We were all shaken with the heavy scent of fear that hung in the aftermath of what could have been our last minutes of life. In front of me, I held the vision of us careening into the angry sea, our bodies never to be found as they were swept underneath the wild currents. All I could do was be thankful, and at a tender age be taught how fragile and precious life is. I'd escaped death by mere seconds and each breath that I took from that moment on was a gift stolen from fate.