from Suzanne Scanlon

When I am not writing I am driving my son to school. When I am not writing my son is learning to drive, with his permit, next to me, learning to drive so that I won’t have to drive him all the way to school all the time. My son is driving because he has to learn. He gets off Lake Shore Drive, he did it, the scary highway, he gets off, turns onto Walton, slowly now, traffic and weather, heading towards State or is it Dearborn, heading west anyway and here now, a car hits us, turns into us, to me in the passenger seat, turns into our car as he (the other driver) is turning from the right lane into the parking lot on the left. We are in the left lane, he (the other driver) does not see us there. When I am not writing I am in my body feeling the other driver’s car turn into the parking lot which is a turn into me, feeling the vulnerability of our bodies, my son’s body my body in this car. The horror of it. Only it isn’t horror then, I don’t feel it then, I feel it later, trying to sleep or make dinner after all of it, sitting on the phone with my insurance company, crying over it. Yes that’s it. The horror arrives with the phone call.