I am cleaning up my junk drawer. It is full of leaky pens, old broken hair bands, receipts faded to beyond recognition, and dried up glue sticks, which I pitch into the trashcan. Just as I am able to see the peeling contact paper pansies on the bottom of the drawer, I pull out ten photographs, and freeze. My heart starts pounding. I go cold and feel woozy as the memories flood my senses.

    Seven-and-a-half years ago, a friend comes over to watch my two year-old while I go to a doctor’s appointment. She is in a rush and cannot find a parking space on my street, so she gives me the keys to her Ford Explorer and tells me to take her car. I drive away feeling tall, and unroll the sky roof. After driving over Highland Avenue past the Hollywood Bowl, I take the car onto the 101 Freeway.

Cruising at 65 mph, listening to Totally Eighties Lunch Break on KROQ , I take in the sights of Universal Studios over the horizon, when the car stops running. Literally, the engine has stopped but the radio still plays. I successfully suppress a crescendo of panic. Using the car’s momentum, I coast my way to the shoulder of the freeway. I have even managed to dial 911 during this slow drift, but it is only ringing. As I shift the car into park, it bursts into flames. I grab only my cell phone and jump out of the car, directly into oncoming traffic. I am afraid to peer behind me but feel the heat of the flames on my backside. In seconds, the Explorer becomes engulfed in flames and kind driver sees me frantically running on the side of the highway and pulls his car over to the shoulder toward me. He opens his car door and yells for me to get in.

By this time, I have become hysterical. I am screaming and confused. There is a car seat in the back. My daughter wasn’t with me, was she? I know she wasn’t, but second-guess myself. Another driver who has pulled over to the side tells me to calm down or I will hyperventilate. By now, maybe one minute into the fire, the freeway has closed down in both directions. Two fire engines come screaming up the ramp, and the fire fighters leap into action. One yells at me, ‘Is there anyone in there?’

    I pause, in horror at the thought and in my confusion, but manage to shake my head no. I add, “It’s not my car!” But, they are already furiously at work.

    The firefighters break the windows of the car and beat back the flames in a spectacle that seems to take hours. I’ve stopped screaming but don’t know when; nor am I sure how many minutes I wait for 911 to answer the phone, but it feels like thirty. The fire fighters are already well into attacking the flames by the time I hear a voice at the other end. I feel out of my body and wonder why I let the number continue to ring. I don’t have words to respond.

Finally, it is all over and the Ford “Exploder,” is a charred carcass smoking on the side of the road. A tow truck arrives and hauls it away and traffic starts churning again at a snail’s pace. I am frozen, numb, and mute. As the truck removes the remains of my friend’s car, I see how the asphalt underneath the car has melted. My husband finally arrives to drive me away yet I have no memory of calling him. He leads me to the car and we follow behind the tow truck to the yard they will leave the car for insurance to inspect. We buy a disposable camera and take pictures. These are what I am holding in my hands at this moment.

Hours later I am home and besieged by fear. It is not a fear for my life. It is a fear for the “could haves” of the episode. Maia could have been in that car. She could have been strapped in the car seat with those impossible to open buckles. I relive the seconds it took from putting the car into park until the car became engulfed in flames and wonder how I could practice removing my baby from the car in 2 seconds flat. It cannot be done I lament. My current personal safety and lack of harm mean nothing. I feel powerless.

As I read my retelling of this event from my past, it strikes me how I have chosen to retell it in the present tense. Seven-and-a-half years have passed, and yet, I remember every detail of that day: the smell of the fuel leak, fire and the chemical spray fire fighters used to extinguish the flames. The charred remains of my purse are extracted and given to me in a plastic bag. My Palm Pilot is melted shut, the bills in my wallet are soaked with chemicals and the lipstick is a puddle of brown goo. The smell singed in my nostrils for weeks. I can still feel the soreness of my throat after screaming and hyperventilating. But, the image of the burnt up car and the melted baby car seat are most permanently seared in my memory. I have no physical bruises or scars, but the photos renew my trauma and remind me that even today, the day after my daughter’s ninth birthday, the fear of losing my children persists.

At this point, I am not sure what to do with these photos. I contemplate throwing them in the trash. Maybe I should place them in a more ‘intentional’ place than the bottom of my junk drawer. But, possibly somewhat unconsciously, I leave them out for a few more days until I carelessly put them into another black-hole drawer, only to be unearthed again when I least expect it. Perhaps this is my way of shocking my system with the electric bolt of humility sometime in the future.