A Resurrection of the Spirit

This was Easter. And not an especially nice Easter, frankly. It was cold. What was with the weather this spring? Everyone you talked to had some kind of low-grade something. Plus, we’d bought too much Easter candy. Why is Easter candy always too sweet?

People seemed peevish. The Sunday papers had been full of little piddling arguments. (For heaven’s sake, does it really matter that desperately whether the millennium starts in the year 2000 or 2001?) The beds were unmade and everyone was too cranky to make them. There was Easter straw all over the living room.

The teenager announced she was going out now. Spring break had just started; the plan was to pick up a girlfriend and drive up the coast. Things were bugging her too. Not enough parties. Too many people who had left for the weekend. Homework. Who could argue? Hey, Sundays in general are unsatisfying, if only because of their proximity to Mondays and work.

So out she went. We settled in to chores and reading and fitful grousing. An hour or so passed. Her kid sisters bickered in the messed-up family room. It was coming up on Sunday dusk when the phone rang. Her father got it: Yes? . . . Yes? . . . What?

His voice was like a thing tumbling in slow motion.

He said: “There has been an accident.”

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To live in these times--of mini-wars, of mega-money--is to know the luxury of little arguments and petty peeves. So much time, so much technology, so few problems that feel truly pressing. You can squander all sorts of energy on worries that are only semi-real.

You can squander whole work weeks, fussing your way from Monday to Friday. One minute you’re fitfully grousing over a little of this, a little of that, and the next: There has been an accident. The house is on fire. Your father is dying. Your toddler was playing too close to the pool.

It’s too hard to go through life with your eye trained on worst-case scenarios. From the moment she got her learner’s permit, everyone said she seemed born to drive. She’d back out of the driveway, sunglasses glinting, car stereo thrumming, and all you could think of was how invulnerable teenagers seem now, how capable and alive.

So, true confessions: When she got her license, we didn’t worry. Not really. Not deeply. And yet, oddly, the thought that superseded all others in the moment of that phone call was that of course there would be an accident. Teenage accidents are so obligatory, they’re a cliche. She was a natural, sure, one of those California kids born with a silver gas pedal under her foot, but aren’t they all? And even if they’re excellent drivers, who can control the other cars on the road?

We couldn’t. There was no denying it. There was only the slow-motion moment, the beating back of worst fears. And then her father’s voice tumbling across the room, saying, “The car’s totaled, it wasn’t her fault, at least no one was hurt.”

He left to retrieve her, and knowing she was safe, I thought: Thank God. And then: What if someone attacks her by the side of the freeway? Did she make it off the road and onto the shoulder? What if they have another accident before they make it home?

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Some people believe heaven is a place with pearly gates and little cherubs. Some think it’s a white light that tumbles around you when you’re almost gone. I don’t know, but I’m beginning to suspect it’s something that runs through this lifetime--a special place you can only get to when something extraordinary jolts you into remembering what’s real, into appreciating what you really care about.

I cannot tell you how long it took for them to make it back. But I do recall that the kitchen light that night seemed especially golden while I waited, that the little ones were especially sweet-smelling and slippery when they tumbled, giggling, from their bubble bath.

When she finally walked in, her face was so drawn that there seemed nothing more worth saying, really, about her near-miss. We put on some tea and broke out the Easter candy, which was so delicious, it seemed unbelievable that we hadn’t noticed it before.

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Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.