Reality Check

A section of guardrail is missing from the Mississippi River bridge I traverse each week day; it may have been taken out last Thursday, during that wreck that flipped a truck end-over-end, or it may have been missing for months. I couldn't tell you. I don't consciously consider my safety as I speed from one state line to the other; I just do what I have to do and go on. Such is life. Someone noticed, though, this morning, and traffic slowed to a crawl as my fellow commuters passed the gaping hole in the metal and concrete. Then I saw it: the risk, however theoretical, that we were all taking high above the muddy water. I should have taken it as a sign.

Today I was twice shaken from my comfort along with those who surround me. The bridge was nothing; a phobia I cannot afford to develop. I may recognize the red Escape with the MAMACTA plate and the Lexus who travels even further than I do, but as long as they keep their distance, I am uninvolved. Not so once I arrive at school.

Being safely ensconced in my citizenship, it's usually easy enough for me to ignore the underlying angst that goes with living without papers. It's true that it's just the way that it is, unavoidable, frankly, for many. And beyond that, I talk most often to teenagers, cavalier about everything, or mostly. Until they watch six agents enter a classmate's apartment, looking for someone absent only by chance. Or until they help that suddenly displaced family, its breadwinner now likely bound for the border, cautiously retrieve its possessions from the home it will certainly abandon. Or until they see their class again collapse in emergency, their teacher by alternating turns serious and sad and efficient as she helps her student locate his brother in the system and prepare to go live with a sister. Tomorrow we'll all be changed, for the first time again.

At times we all think we'll live forever. At times we all think, "it'll never be me." But someone busted that guard rail. And now some of us have to drive by.