Mid-September

I put myself out there to take a two-and-a-half-hour trip to go to a work-related fundraiser Friday. From about noon to 3 p.m. I was second-guessing my decision to go; thought that I think a long trip to go somewhere for an event that would last only a few hours sounds like a great idea until it comes close to the departure time and I start thinking of the long road ahead and all the other things I could be doing with my time. I've gotten myself in those situations, and when I get there, I question the idiocy of my foolish choices.
From the time I left home, though, to the time I returned home, I was glad I went. I met the spouses of people I'd known for awhile, had some good food, and talked to a lot of nice, funny people.
Friday in the midst of my preparations for travel, a squirrel ran right under my car as I was driving uphill toward home. If I had applied the brakes it wouldn't have made a difference. Probably the only thing I could have done to avoid the accident would have been to stop at the ATM a few blocks away like I had planned but had forgotten to do. I'd managed to drive for all of my 20 years of driving without killing a single animal. I heard "clunkety clunk" under my wheels. I drove around the block to move the squirrel out of the road. As I approached its little body, I noticed a crushed chestnut inches away from it. The squirrel's fluffy tail swished from left to right, but the life was gone. I moved it off the road and apologized to the squirrel and its family, and babies, if it had any. The whole way down the interstate and back the next day was littered with squirrel bodies. I managed to save the lives of a couple of squirrels who dashed in front of my car on my trip, so I felt a little better about the animal that died under the wheels of my car. Someone told me there's a shortage of nuts in the area this year, which is causing the squirrels to forage frantically.
The death of the squirrel made me think about how, in the past three years, random, unpreventable accidents have happened to me at precisely this time in September. Last year, a dog bit me while I was walking calmly and peacefully in front of its owner's house. The year before that, I was stopped at a traffic light and a caravan rear-ended my vehicle, which caused my car's frame to crack. I don't remember any unavoidable tragedies in any other mid-Septembers. And I think that there were good results from my tragedies, with the exception of the squirrel dying: one, the damages from the car helped me pay for a new vehicle; two, the owner of the dog stopped having the dog wander around aimlessly without a leash in the vicinity of my house. Actually, now that I think about it (and was recently reminded that everything that happens to us is a learning experience), it helps me realize that unavoidable tragedies are a part of life, cannot be predicted, and sometimes we cannot prepare for them. But of course, just having the ability to drive in a car means that inadvertently killing innocent squirrels is a likely inevitability. I have been prepared for this moment. All those near-misses I've had have prepared me for it. And to think, thinking things through makes something out of what might seem to some like nothing. But life is our teacher, from the beginning to the end.