A moment can be a terrible, long thing. It can drag you through all the previous moments that have led you to your current point, all while putting off the inevitable final moment. For Sydney, she found herself reflecting on the journey that was about to end. Not all the moments of her life, but starting with the last moment before her class ended, and the trip began.
Sitting in her desk, waiting for the bell to ring. Jaime was talking loudly to his friends, trying to make them laugh. The teacher, Ms. Bishop, was cleaning the whiteboard. Summertime, and the long-promised vacation, was only hours away. Sydney’s desk had been cleared out revealing quite the trove of unfinished assignments, broken pencils, informational flyers she was meant to have taken home, and a myriad of other small bits of debris that find themselves in a fifth graders desk. Ms. Bishop had always been on her about cleaning it up, but Sydney would always forget about it the moment she closed the desk.
Then she was sitting at dinner, listening to her mother and father discuss the next day’s plan. Her father sounded slightly stressed as he rattled off everything on the list while her mother spoke in the same calm voice she used to put Sydney’s twin brother, Charlie, to sleep. With his parents distracted, Charlie was taking the opportunity to hide his Brussel sprouts in his napkin. Sydney continued to eat her dinner, excitement for the trip flooding her body.
The car trip the next day took much longer than Sydney had been prepared for. Sure, her father had sat her down to explain they would be in the car for nine hours on the first day, but Sydney hadn’t understood that would take quite so long. She didn’t cause a fuss, though. Not with Charlie sitting in the seat next to her, constantly asking if “they were there yet”. Fortunately, Sydney had been unable to sleep the night before, so she dozed off for most of the drive.
Dinner was fried potatoes, spam, and salad. Sydney didn’t like spam, but it was something her father insisted on making on the first night of their annual week-long camping trip. The potatoes and salad had long left her plate, but the spam stared back at her. They were camped in a forest in Utah, surrounded by maple trees. The sound of a rushing river filled the air at night, broken occasionally by the crunching sound of other campers walking along the gravel roads.
The second leg of the trip went much faster than the first. Mostly because it was only five hours, instead of nine. They had spent the second full day in the campground, and now they had stopped in a hotel. The next day they would finish their trip to Sacramento, but first they would stay in the hotel where they could shower and sleep in an air-conditioned room. Sydney’s father agreed to order room service, and they spent the night eating pasta and watching the hotel television. The only channel with anything they could agree to watch was the Spanish channel, so they ended up watching Spider-Man with the subtitles on. Seeing the familiar characters mouths move un-synced with the Spanish dub made Sydney giggle.
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They stayed in Sacramento for three days. The fresh fruit, sunshine, smiling family, and adult conversation all blurred together for Sydney. Her aunt snuck Charlie extra bits of garlic bread when their mother wasn’t looking, and Sydney would play with their aunts cat whenever she deigned to make an appearance. Sydney was sad to leave, but ultimately was excited to get home. She missed her own bed and her friends from school.
The drive home was two days of full driving. Sydney’s parents crammed the trip into two ten hour trips, switching drivers every four hours. They stayed in the same hotel in Nevada, but did not stop again in the campground in Utah. Sydney’s butt hurt from sitting for so long, and she grew very bored. She had finished her books on the way up, so now she was left with nothing to do but watch out the window. In the moment, ten hours seemed to take an eternity.
On the last hour of their journey, as they were re-entering Sydney’s hometown, she grew excited. They passed her school, and she counted on her fingers how many weeks until she would have to return. They passed the turn to Jaime’s house, and Sydney wondered if they would make plans for the week. They passed the restaurant Sydney’s parents liked, and Sydney knew they would be coming back this way the next day for dinner.
They approached an intersection late in the night, and Sydney watched the light turn from red to green. Sydney’s father, who had refused to swap drivers in order to get home more quickly, was on his sixth straight hour of driving. He cruised through the intersection. Sydney watched out of the back window. She was the only one to be aware of the oncoming truck. Charlie was asleep and her mother was texting the house-sitter. Sydney’s father heard the brakes squeal, but there was no time for him to look.
The moment before the impact was a terrible, long thing. It took Sydney through all the previous moments of the vacation. None of them had suggested that this would be her last, and yet, she could see the headlights just inches away. Close enough that the reflection off the side of her car cast a strange light on the young man who was driving. Sydney was not old enough to understand drunk driving, but her perception had no affect on the eternal moment. She understood danger well enough that she might have cried out, but there was not time for such things. A moment can be a terrible, long thing, but in the end, it is still just a moment. And despite all the best efforts of the brain and spirit, time cannot be slowed down.