Dances with Wolves

This morning, while having some Cheerio's with Mr. MarthaWho and LittleMe, I glanced over my right shoulder and saw something shiny passing through the back yard. Once my pre-caffeinated synapses caught up with my eyes I realized that I had just seen a CAR sailing past my dining room window. And though it was but a second, I also saw enough to know there was a little girl in the passenger seat. Holy shit.

There was no sound -- nothing out of the ordinary. No horns, no screeching tires, nothing to alert us that a motor vehicle was about to careen off of the main road, bypass our driveway, crash through our fence and start flying through the play yard heading straight for the icy river. With LittleMe safely ensconced in her booster seat chewing on a bagel, I screamed for Mr. MW to put his parka on and go out to help, while I called 911. Now, in October we switched from Verizon to a local VoIP carrier and there is no 911 service on VoIP. I remember thinking at the time that this was OK, but man it's SO not. Thankfully we have 2 other land lines in the house for work. By the time I got to 911, I was told a police cruiser was already on the way. Didn't think much of it at the time.

While I was on the phone with police dispatch, I ran to the back of the house and looked out the window. Thankfully the driver and his daughter were out of the car, and I was relieved to note that they had not made it all the way to the river. In fact there were enough objects in the yard that the car was able to be stopped. The only casualties other than his 1984 T-bird were the fence screening in our play area, LittleMe's swingset, and Mr. MarthaWho's new snowblower. It was rush hour, and we happen to live at the exact intersection of two of the main thoroughfares in Portland. The car had apparently lost complete brake function at the top of the hill near our house and he only had a moment to decide what he was going to do. He threw the car in park and pulled the emergency brake, and aimed for our front yard... it was the right thing to do. Had he gone straight into the intersection, he certainly would have been broadsided by an unsuspecting stiff heading to work. That little girl would be in a serious world of hurt if she had survived at all.

As it turned out, they had been to our house before -- the little girl was friends with the little girl that had lived here before we moved here last July. I assume then that maybe they knew there was the fenced in side yard they could use to buffer themselves from the river. Either way they are very very lucky.

The police came, the car was towed, the guys wife came to pick them up and we all made our goodbyes. At that point LittleMe was 1/2 hour late for school so I quickly showered and while I was bundling her up to get into the car I remarked to my husband how odd it was that nobody else pulled over to help. What if we hadn't been home after all? What if the car had made it all the way to the river? Didn't anyone see this happen? It was at the height of rush hour.

When I walked into the school, the director looked at me and said "hey -- you've had an exciting morning haven't you?" I assumed Mr. MW had called in to let them know we were on the way but when I indicated as much, she let me know that Hunter's mommy, the mother of one of my daughter's classmates had been the car directly behind the 1984 T-Bird and had seen the whole thing on the way to bring Hunter to school. She, in fact, had been the one who called 911, thinking there was nothing else she could do with her own toddler in the back seat, as she headed in to school.

Ten years ago, my first boss recommended a book to me. I wish I could remember the title but I cannot -- it was a compilation of stories related by people who had had near-death experiences. Mostly stories of people drifting between life and death after injuries, while recovering from a serious illness, or during life-threatening surgical procedures -- people who saw dead relatives, or other "ghosts" who then came back to life with these tales from some "other side"... the upshot of this book was that the authors believe that all living beings are just fields of energy without beginning or end -- that although the mortal body may eventually die, the energy continues on until the next incarnation. The book takes this reincarnation stuff to the next level by asserting that these energy masses, or souls, are connected permanently to other souls in the larger universe. Like all souls are grouped together and travel through time and the universe in packs, like wolves. And that the purpose of our mortal time on earth is to find and connect with the other souls from our pack. Every time one is reincarnated then, from the moment of "birth" one is searching for the rest of the souls from the pack.

There are degrees of relational intensity - some souls are so closely tied together that the contact in the mortal world must be very very significant. In one "life" it may be that two of these connected souls are a married couple. In another "life" it may be that they are parent and child. In yet another life it may be a man and his dog. Or a bee and a honeysuckle bush.

And on the same line of reasoning, there are souls that are from the same pack, but not necessarily meant to be deeply connected forever and ever. I remember one example from the book being when you are at a party or a soccer game or a rock concert and your eyes lock with someone "familiar" - there is an instant attraction - not on a physical/sexual plane but just on a plane that says you recognize each other from some other place or time. More often than not you do not approach this stranger or engage him in conversation. It's just a fleeting glance, a shared moment of enlightenment, and usually quickly catalogued and forgotten. The authors of this book would contend that these two strangers are in the same "pack" -- and that this one brief look at one another is enough for the soul to reconnect.

And so life would then become just one long (or short depending on the circumstances) quest to reconnect with everyone from the pack. Once everyone has been accounted for you can "die" and start over.

Anyway, it's a weird book, and at the time I largely chalked it up to new agey hooey and never quite looked at my boss the same way again.

But I do think about it from time to time, even ten years later. Especially on days like today -- maybe this morning was a little reunions of some of the souls in my pack. One car accident connected a scared dad and his daughter, the former owners of my house, Hunter's mommy, and my family in a brief but dramatic experience. There are even the supporting players -- the person who sold us the snowblower last month -- the snowblower that stopped the car from going in to the river.

The same people keep popping up over and over again in random ways. It may just be a series of small-world coincidences but it does seem like there are occasional glimpses of order in the universe.