Chasing cars

We'll do it all
Everything On our own

I felt my body winding down, driving along FL-11 headed back to the office. There were trees on either side and the clouds were turning purple. The sun was leaving me, but I wasn’t sad. Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” came on the truck radio.

I’d just left the home of the Santiago family where I spent maybe 45 minutes interviewing their 20-year-old daughter about yesterday morning’s home invasion; how men had assaulted her father and older sister, stolen her nephew – later returned – and tumbled their home.

We don't need
Anything Or anyone

I felt strangely unaffected, not numb, just not as empathically traumatized as I thought I would.

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

When I was three and we lived in my parents’ dream home in Santa Cruz, three men broke into our lives at 2a.m. on my eldest brother’s 7th birthday.

I remember little of it other than waking up in my parents’ huge bed to the sound of strange men’s voices and dark figures over us. I felt slightly annoyed they were disturbing my sleep before drifting off again.

I don't quite know
How to say How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
But not enough

What actually happened was that my father heard what he thought was a gunshot – actually our double front door slamming onto the dining room floor.

The men quickly made their way to the master bedroom where all five of us slept on a king-sized bed and a double-bed pushed together, us three kids snuggled between our parents.

They demanded money. One sat on my mother’s legs so she couldn’t get up while another tied up my father and took him to another room. They left in my father’s car with jewelry, some cash and wedding rings.

Those were the early days of robbery in Trinidad before rape and assault, before killing innocent children, before slicing off fingers to get tight rings. We were lucky. We escaped with fear for our lives.

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I told the girl I was interviewing that I’d been through the same when I was younger. She didn’t seem comforted though, only pale and fighting for strength for her shaken family.

Me? I’d roll back to the office and write a story on the scariest day of their lives. It’d end up on the newspaper’s front page and I’d have another prominent story to add to my portfolio, another reason why a newspaper in Miami might call and ask me to come in for an interview.

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Today they’d wake up and walk out to their driveway for the newspaper. They’d read the story and note perhaps that I spelt someone’s name wrong. But they’d never call or e-mail demanding a correction.

They’d walk inside instead, step over tumbled furniture they hadn’t energy to right last night and pull 7-year-old Alexis Santiago into warm arms. "Te quiero hijo."

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

Photo "Highway in the Desert" by John Lund courtesy Corbis