When I graduated from college I got my first car. It was a white 64' Mustang, and served me well for a few years. I was an inexperienced driver, and one afternoon I was going around a tight corner that had zero visibility. Being more in the center than to the side I came frightfully close to colliding with a gold sedan coming the other way. One that my father was driving.

 

The passenger beside him was furious. 

 

"Did you see how close she came to hitting us?"

 

My father sighed. 

 

"Yes I did. It was my youngest daughter."

 

He wondered whether to mention it to me at dinner. He decided I needed to know. To be more careful. As it turns out I often think of that day when I navigate that turn. 

 

These days our family owns four cars. Zack drives Luigi, John takes Larry, I drive Anna and the twins use Kiwi. At times when one person is backing out of the driveway it is a tight maneuver. But I worry less than I do in a public parking lot. If Kiwi dents Luigi we will not be devastated. It would be different slamming into a brand new Prius with a finicky owner. Not that I would expect anyone with a new Prius to be less than finicky. 

 

The thing is, anonymity is a facade. When our daughter was bouncing through cancelled flights coming home from Europe, the passengers who meant almost nothing to her in the first boarding evolved to being her clan by the third. They shared stories, and lunch, and looked out for each other shuttling back and forth. It was her own reenactment of one of her favorite Broadway musicals, Come from Away. The show tells about the Canadian town that soaked up 7,000 stranded travelers when planes were rerouted after the Twin Towers went down. There is also a tender video about the hundreds of civilian boaters who rescued 500,000 New Yorkers trying to escape Manhattan on 9/11. 

 

The surprising thing is, God does not make strangers. We do.