Route 37 Crash Reminded Me of Terror of Being a Parent

Last Saturday, I found myself sitting at my desk and weeping, and it wasn’t because I had run out of wine (I’d sooner run out of toilet paper).

I had spent much of the day working, and as I was clicking around, getting distracted by the Internet (I have cyber-ADD), I came across a  from the Patch reporting that three Jackson Memorial High School baseball players had been in a car accident the night before and the boy in the back seat had been ejected from the vehicle by the force of the crash and killed.

Not 24 hours earlier had I kissed my 18-year-old son good-bye as he headed off with his girlfriend to his senior prom and then down to Seaside Heights for the obligatory party weekend. Just like my son, James Volpe, who was killed in Friday’s crash, was a high school senior with plans for college in the fall and a life’s worth of dreams. One minute he’s riding in the back seat with his friends, and in a terrible twist of fate, in an instant he’s gone.

I lost it, and ran to get one of my kids to bear witness to my grief. I wanted her to think of her mother’s mottled, teary-eyed face—over a complete stranger— any time she considered doing something dumb. I wanted her to see how life can change on a dime when you thought you had dollars and dollars to spare; when they were practically falling out of your pockets, you had so many.

Being a parent is terrifying. The weight of responsibility and love you feel for these people could stop you dead in your tracks if you let it.

I recently heard through a friend of a mom who has been filling a binder with newspaper clippings of these horrendous stories since her kids were young. That’s about 20 years of countless lost lives, filed inside a vinyl folder.

When they were young, I had a recurring dream where I’d be standing in the ocean, holding one of my babies, and suddenly lose my grip on his little body. The baby would sink into the dark water and I’d be unable to pull him back to me; I wasn’t able to wrap my arms back around him and pull him to safety.

I have sometimes found myself staring at my children, and I know it freaks them out and they call me a “creeper.” I’m sure it’s unnerving, but I can’t help it: for all their bad moods and anxieties, I can’t believe their dad and I actually made them--with their long legs, hairy arms and silly personalities. They are just so alive.

And that’s what freaks me out, that all that life could be extinguished in a heartbeat.

For my son’s prom, I followed a car full of teens to a house in Colts Neck where a group of tuxedoed young men and their satin-swathed dates gathered for pictures. During the drive I was reminded of how invincible kids think they are, as the driver I was following took a left hand turn as two lanes of oncoming traffic closed in on his car.

All I could think was: a. I am not risking my neck and following that idiot and b. holy crow, my kid is in that car.

And that’s just the one near miss I happened to see. Imagine all the things that go down that I know nothing about.

There’s a part of me that just wants to layer my children in bubble wrap and put them high up on a shelf in my closet, with all the old beach bags. Or maybe I could keep them on display, like my grandmother’s Hummel figurines, and take them down to admire and blow the dust off on occasion.

But the more reasonable part of me knows that that’s part of the risk we take in truly living our lives. We pour all that we have into raising our children—from the moment the doctor puts that little gooey newborn in our arms, we’re hooked.

And when we read about yet another teen tragedy, we can’t help but cry for all that those families have lost and all that might have been.

And then we knock on wood, say a prayer, spin around three times in a circle—anything that might stave off that unthinkable possibility. Then we go into the family room where the kids are watching TV and we stare at them for a while, and then pour ourselves a big glass of wine.