Shalini’s mom was, as all mothers of teenagers are, totes annoying, you know? She would not let Shalini sit up front until she met the weight and height requirements. And because Shalini was lightweight and short, this humiliation went on for years.
“It’s safer in the back, anyway!” her mother would always chirp. Shalini would roll her eyes.
Shalini had been up front now for a couple of years. At seventeen, she wished it were her turn to practice driving, but her mother rarely gave her a turn, especially in the winter.
One icy day, they were driving passed some open farmland on the way to the grocery store. Shalini’s mom hated traffic, and took back roads whenever she was able. Shalini was texting her friends, when her mom exclaimed, “Whoaa,” just as you would to a horse. Her mom slowed the car to a stop.
In front of them was just the kind of thing Shalini’s mom would slow to a stop for: in the bend ahead was a tree. She didn’t stop just for a tree mind you, but of the way the light hit the tree. Shalini had to admit, if she peeked just above the screen of her phone, she could see it was all pretty spectacular.
The light hit the massive old tree in a way that made the bark appear a brilliant white. High up, certain of the tangle of branches intertwined like a Celtic knot, an intricate crown of sharp white shone against a winter sky.
Later, Shalini often thought how, at that moment she’d urged her mom to keep moving, but her mom had said that the light would change and the beauty would fly away, so why rush? That cars were too fast—they were metal objects hurtling through space, and she was more a horse and buggy kind of person, anyway. Why couldn’t everyone just slow down?
Even though she was seated in the back, Shalini was the only one badly hurt that night, two weeks later, when her friend drove the car into the same tree. Her friend, the driver, had been texting about how the Quarterback was throwing to the wrong jersey and when he looked up, he said “Whoa!” and the car hit the tree instead of turning the bend. The crown was dark and broken.
Shalini had five strokes on the way to the hospital. A brain infection followed and so did a coma, and blindness. She can’t feel one of her hands and one of her feet.
Shalini came to Carson’s Traumatic Brain Injury Program with questions. She found some goals. She wants to have a career. She wants to live independently. But what would come right now? On her first new footing, she decided to go to school and talk to people about texting and driving. She had been a gifted athlete. Now she uses those physical sensibilities to find her way down the long halls of the schools, to the microphone on the stage. She can hear the students shift and breathe as they wait. She’ll pause after the funny part of her talk and listen for their laughter. She’ll wait at certain moments and listen for their growing awareness at what it means to careen forward, carelessly, and then what it means to have courage. More than any young person would like to admit. Shalini is like her mom; she looks for beauty. Her Carson worker doesn’t see this discipline; she looks at Shalini and beauty is all she sees.
By JAC Patrissi
