Enough time has passed that now I can share this story.
One of my work-at-home responsibilities is delivering the kids safely to day care in the morning, but this day had started off as troublesome as it gets. I needed thirty minutes to shovel a wide-enough space through the snow for my wife to extricate her car from the garage. After she left, Oren threw a tantrum because he didn’t want to get dressed. Siena couldn’t find a particular stuffed animal. Thirty minutes behind schedule—I had a phone meeting in under an hour—I had two screaming kids in the minivan. I began to shovel and scrape the windshield, refusing to abandon the kids to get my gloves. Then Oren soiled his diaper, and since I wasn’t willing to bring both kids (or just Oren) inside for a change, I began the ten-minute drive in olfactory overload.
The storm was rotten. The minivan failed to take a nearby hill, and so we half-slid toward an alternate route. Parking was impossible. Both kids insisted on being carried: sixty-five pounds of child, twenty-five pounds of clothes and baggage, three flights of stairs. On wet carpet we undressed, the kids clinging and unhelpful and smelly, when my phone rang. It was my wife, calling to tell me — you ready for this? — that she was in a car accident. Over the kids’ screams I got the most important details: no one hurt, car still functional, my wife psychologically stable enough to drive. Knowing she was safe, I reassured her I’d call back in two minutes. Quickly now, I did everything I could to rush through all remaining responsibilities, ridding myself of these loud, stinky, burdensome creatures, my mind racing with possibilities as I wait impatiently to call back my wife. When I finally do call, I get voicemail and leave a concerned message.
Phew.
Now here’s my wife’s version of the story. She leaves the house late and twenty minutes later gets struck from behind by a car, which causes her own car to spin around on the slick blacktop of a highway onramp. She calls me, offers me a perfunctory summary of events, and hears me say to her, “I need to finish this. I’ll call you back.” Click.
There really is no substitute for a little bit of perspective.