Swerve

"How can someone possibly love someone else this much?" my mom asked me as we were driving back to Stockton.
"It doesn't make sense, a mother's love for her child. But I do. I love you so much it's beyond reason."
I smiled, keeping my eye on the road.
"It's probably an evolutionary development to make sure mothers get their kids to survive," I replied cynically.

Before she could respond, the car in the fast lane next to me changed lanes abruptly, definitely on course to hit me. Reacting as accordingly as I could, I swerved over to the next lane of the four-lane highway.

"Andrew, what are you do-!" my mom began to shout.

But she was cut off by the ensuing reaction swerve I needed to get back on course, to compensate for the overly sharp turn I had made. The next few moments thrust me into the palate of death.

I swerved uncontrollably, to the left, then to the right, unable to get a steady handle on the steering.

"ANDREW! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! OH MY GOD!" my mom was yelling, one hand holding the handle above the passenger seat's window, the other gripping my arm in a vain attempt to control the movement of the car.

I didn't have time to respond. I just had to keep going straight, keep trying to get the car back in a lane as the car kept going out of control. Left and right I turned, each swerve making up for the sharpness of the last one.

After multiple swerves, I found myself dangerously close to driving off the highway into the bank while swerving even more dangerously close to the divider. I could smell the burning rubber of our new tires. There were moments where the car was facing sideways but was still moving forward on the highway, seconds where the car was moving to the left without the rolling of the wheels. The screeching of our tires were almost harmonic to my mother's pleas.

"ANDREW! OH MY GOD! STOP!" she cried.

And then we tail-spinned fully around, the smoke from the burning rubber still lazily escalating in our headlights as we came to a stop. A split second I took to make sure we had stopped completely. We were facing the headlights of on-coming traffic. The cars behind us had slowed in the wake of our insanity. They were like white eyes seeing clearly in the dark of the night, judging cautiously and rationalizing the danger.

I turned on the emergency lights and slowly drove to the right bank. Cars inched forward carefully and sped off. One stopped behind us, presumably to check if we were okay. It left shortly after.

I was still breathing, still recovering. My mom was crying, clearly shaken.

"We should be dead," she sobbed. "But we're here. We should be dead. We didn't get hit. We didn't die. We should have been dead. We survived," she intoned, weeping still.

No, we didn't die. As we have been doing our entire lives, we survived.

Yet, I could never shake off the feeling that there were multiple moments were I should have died, where I should have ceased to exist. It takes a near-death experience to realize the fragility of our lives, the very real possibility of death.

Ironically enough, it takes death to realize life.

And to all my friends out there, I want to tell you that I care deeply for all of you, even if I may not have shown it adequately. I care immensely for your safety and your friendship.

Because no matter what kind of evolutionary trait we have developed as a species, ultimately one thing has not changed. Our deaths are as final and permanent as they will always be.

But likewise, our lives can be infinitely more. So thank you, friends, for making my lives more. =)