Loved, Not Judged

The Day I Was Broken Open

Empty Red Wagon in an Orkney Field — Photo © Thomas J. Hurley

Sara and I will have been married thirty-five years this fall. We have a framed photograph on the wall of our bedroom that depicts a pivotal moment in our relationship. In it, we are meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is on the left in the photo, in orange and yellow robes that leave his brown arms bare to the shoulder, his head thrust slightly forward as he gazes at me, listening with a smile as I speak. Sara is on the right, eyes downcast, smiling shyly but with obvious joy, dressed in a cream-colored linen jacket and orange-red silk blouse. Her brown hair was cut short then, well above her shoulders. I am the tall, bearded young man between them, about to surprise all three of us with a bold request.

The setting was an oceanfront hotel in Newport Beach, California. Sara and I were there for a conference featuring the Dalai Lama in dialogue with Western scientists, psychologists, and philosophers. Since I represented one of the organizations funding the conference, we were invited to a private reception where we had a few minutes alone with His Holiness. On the spur of the moment, I told him that Sara and I were engaged and asked if he’d say a prayer for our marriage. Sara blushed and he blinked, clearly not anticipating such an appeal. Then he recovered, leaned forward, and peered intently at each of us in turn. I felt as if he were looking at something we couldn’t see, and suddenly I feared that he’d shake his head and decline, having seen that our relationship wouldn’t last. Then he smiled, took our hands in his, bowed his head, and quietly chanted a blessing in Tibetan.

Sara says that was the moment she knew it was okay to marry me.

Control

We were blessed by the Dalai Lama in October, 1989. I had experienced my own moment of knowing some sixteen months earlier, when we gave up our separate apartments and found a small house in San Francisco’s East Bay hills to rent. There is no photograph to mark the events that took place twelve days after we moved in together. The only image I have of them is one indelibly seared into memory.

I was preparing to leave the house for work. I expected to be home late, for that night I’d be hosting dinner at a local restaurant for participants in a three-day research symposium I’d organized. I kissed Sara goodbye and was filling my travel mug when she called out with a cheerful reminder. “Drive carefully! That’s the only car we have!”

“I will,” I replied gruffly, knitting my brows in annoyance at the assumption that I might not drive carefully. I am an excellent (if aggressive) driver, and she knew it. Then I shrugged and let it go. What she said was true—we did have only one car, her yellow Subaru wagon. My car had died on the day we moved in together. It was a faded gray Toyota Corolla that had served me well for almost fifteen years, carrying me through college in South Carolina, graduate school in Texas, and my first seven years in the San Francisco Bay area. Twice I had rebuilt its small but sturdy engine to coax more than 200,000 miles from it. But when it threw a rod on the first of May, 1988, I had it towed to the curb of the home we’d just rented and never drove it again.

By the time I reached Sara’s wagon, I was mentally reviewing my schedule for the day and planning the stops I needed to make on my way to the office. As I backed out of the driveway, though, her warning came back to me. I had to have the last word, if only in my own mind. I always drive carefully, I thought, and, anyway, I’m not the one who tends to break things.

This had recently been a sore point between us. I tend to take very good care of things, or at least not to damage them through carelessness. I had come home one evening to learn that Sara had accidentally dropped and broken a bowl in the kitchen. After looking at her to make sure she was not physically hurt—but not asking about that—I frowned at her explanation of what happened and curtly inquired, “Why can’t you be more careful?” Skillful, right? She glared at me and the battle was engaged. When she finally shouted, “You care more about our damn things than you do about me!” I retreated. Her accusation stung, but I was too angry and defensive to admit it. Eventually both of us went to bed upset. As we lay side by side in the darkness, unspeaking, the words from an old Simon and Garfunkel song surfaced.

        Hiding in my room, safe within my womb, 
        I touch no one and no one touches me. 
        I am a rock, I am an island. 
        And a rock feels no pain, 
        And an island never cries. 

Sara reached out seeking contact, but I turned away and withdrew behind the walls of my fortress. It was a lonely place, but safe, and I did not have to risk sharing feelings I experienced as weakness. At least not when I was in control and had a choice.

Collision

That had been days ago. This morning, having completed my errands in the East Bay, I followed Buchanan Street to the freeway that would take me over the bridge to Sausalito, where I worked. The on-ramp at Buchanan was a case study in bad design, with a blind curve and sudden, mad merger into the fast lane of traffic on the freeway. There was no margin for error, but I had used the route hundreds of times and knew how to make the quick judgments required. Coming into its blind curve, I glanced forward to ensure the ramp was clear, then looked back to study oncoming traffic. Once I decided which gap to enter, I accelerated rapidly and looked forward again.

Just in time to see a tan pickup truck stopped dead on the ramp where no vehicle had been just a moment before. I stood on the brakes and for one long second hoped the car would come to a miraculous stop. Then the truck’s tailgate filled my vision, we collided with a metal-rending crash, and I hurtled toward the windshield before being flung back by the shoulder harness that saved my life.

Absolute stillness followed. I was stunned but conscious. Disbelieving. Desolate. Grateful to be alive. Then I shuttered my feelings and focused on action. I had to check on the other driver.

Steam hissed from the engine compartment as I forced open my door and limped forward. A woman about my own age sat with head bowed, shock slackening her features. She wasn’t bleeding and said nothing seemed broken, but tears traced a path down her cheeks when I touched her arm.

“I was afraid,” she said, almost to herself. “I couldn’t see any way to get into traffic. And then I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw you.” Her voice quavered. “I knew you’d never be able to stop.”

I stayed by her side till the Highway Patrol arrived, both of us in shock. The next hour passed in a series of clear, focused conversations with police, medical technicians, and others on the scene. Both vehicles would be towed for scrap. The woman I’d hit went to the hospital in an ambulance. When I declined to do the same, an officer familiar with this section of highway said, “You’re lucky to be walking away in one piece.” I nodded, but I was already more concerned with how I was going to commute across the bay for the conference I had to chair than with my own well-being. “Go home,” he said. “You’re running on pure adrenaline and don’t know it.”

I watched a snowy egret poised motionless in the marsh nearby, its delicate white feathers ruffled by a light breeze, and listened to the traffic that roared by at sixty miles an hour only yards away. A friend who was driving by saw me and stopped. After getting a ticket for stopping at the scene of an accident, he took me back to Sara’s office.

Grace

Sara worked for a small publishing company on the third floor of an aging brick building in downtown Berkeley. I climbed its wooden stairs with reluctant feet, every step echoing in the cramped, narrow stairwell. With each step, my dread grew. Drive carefully, she had said. That’s the only car we have. She had every right to be furious with me. Emotions I had held in check since the moment of impact filled me; I bit my lip to contain them. Then I took a deep breath and pushed open her office door.

A co-worker came forward and asked pertly, “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Sara,” I stammered, just as she stepped out into the hallway. Pleasure and puzzlement crossed her face at the same time. Then she noticed my expression and hurried forward. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

I could hardly speak. I tightened my face against tears welling up and croaked, “I totaled your car.”

And steeled myself, waiting to be attacked: You did what???

I was undone by what followed.

Gently placing her hand on my heart, eyes gazing into mine, she asked, “Oh, Tom! Are you all right?”

That is the moment I remember. Her brown eyes, filled with concern. The warmth of her hand on my trembling body. Her love, holding me up.

Being defenseless, and being embraced.

There was no question about the car. She didn’t say or think I told you so. I stood before her waiting to be judged and she saw only someone she cherished, needing care.

In that moment, I knew I was truly loved.

Since then, I try to drive carefully.

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