It began with the car accident.

The Parked Car in the street, the U-haul ahead, a pick-up truck peeling out of his driveway with less-than-desirable visibility. I swerve, thinking of course I could clear the parked car to my right.

I could not.

I scrawl a note with a sincere apology, my contact information. Scout and Bee watch from car seats – wide-eyed as I bend to pick up a shattered side mirror on the side of the street.

It is not yet 9am.

I call our insurance, speak with an adjuster – apologize profusely when the owner of the parked car calls back. I schedule an estimate. I shuttle the dogs to the groomers, stopping at the grocery store for avocados, bananas, bread. A pint of iced coffee for a post-frenzied-morning treat.

Back home, I fuss with Scout’s car seat and hit the trunk button to hear the distinct sound of a dense plastic bag rolling, overturning, glass and caffeine exploding onto the driveway below.

I unload the remaining groceries – the rest left unscathed – and after I put Scout down for his nap, Bee and I find ourselves back on the driveway picking tiny kaleidoscopes of amber glass and cold brew from the concrete.

What’s with today? she says.

—

Later, it was the wedding ring.

The loose diamond as I open the refrigerator to look for cabbage, the quiet ping as it scatters across the room, the temporary panic as it skids toward the vent.

I crouch down, find the diamond, slip it with the ring into a Ziploc bag, tuck it in my top vanity drawer.

I’m sorry, I say to Ken.

—

Later still, a miscommunication, a disagreement left unresolved, a looming decision, a fitful night of sleep. The morning-after feeling when you wake, remembering you’re ringless with a scratch down the side of your van.

What’s with today? I say to no one at all.

—

We have been living at breakneck speed this month, rejiggering our calendars to compensate for a sickness here, a last-minute deadline there, both on the giving and receiving end of each other’s mistakes, our own. In a misfired attempt to cope with the fullness, I pounded three daily miles on the pavement only to develop a bad case of runner’s knee (oh, if only this were metaphorical).

We knew it was coming, the dropped bottom, although I anticipated far less shards.

It was a bad day, is all. It was one of many, smack dab in the middle of a lot of other people’s bad days, in the midst of a news cycle that spins wild, in the center of a gnashing heard collective.

And this is how I know to start paying attention. This is how I know it’s either going to get good, or it isn’t.

—

I do not feel better yet, not really. (You?) My soul still feels a little knocked up, wrung out. Still underwater.

But in all of life’s strange-and-graceful meandering, isn’t this what it takes? A few shards to shatter the surface? Your own small, average mishaps swirling under a slew of larger ones to snap you into the realization that this is it? This is what we get?

Just, this – the everyday junk of life. The tiny moments that drive you insane from inconvenience into sheer gratitude for survival in no less than the time it takes to crash a car. The dumb stuff that sends you jumping for joy then brings you to your knees, your daughter picking pieces of glass from your cuticles.

A whole world, waiting for a whole world.

—

The next thing, then.

A nap. A book. A text to the girlfriends. A short walk, a favor for the neighbor. Catch with Scout. A phone call with my dad.  An emptying of a calendar square for Ken, a filling for me. A water refill. A course correction of the smallest degree.

And this, one of Bee’s famous knock knock jokes:

—

Will you remember me in a year?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a month?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a week?
Yes.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
See? You forgot me already!

—

A whispered prayer that we don’t.