Scene 1: Christiane’s brain before going to Israel.

Voice 1: Wow, I cannot believe I’m going back there. I’m even taking my husband and my little boy. What if there are any terror attacks while we are there? What if there’s something wrong with the plane? I’m scared. I could never forgive myself if anything happened to us.

Voice 2: Oh come on, you’ve been there before. Just relax. It’ll be fine.

Voice 3: It’s so easy sitting on that comfy couch, letting the people over there deal with their own problems, isn’t it? If they can live there, you can go there and show you care. These are your friends, for heaven’s sake.

Voice 1: I’m still scared.

Scene 2: On the beach, Tel Aviv.

Husband: I cannot believe how wonderful this is.

Me: I know.

Jakob: screaming with joy at the waves of the Mediterranean.

Scene 3: Jerusalem, the Old City.

Husband: Do you think we would have come here if we hadn’t been invited to the wedding?

Me: I don’t think so.

Husband: That’s so wrong.

Me: I know.

Scene 4: The wedding.

The sun is setting behind the hills of Jerusalem, bride and groom are standing beneath the wedding canopy, the Old City in the background. The bride circles the groom seven times, family members speak Hebrew blessings, the couple exchanges rings and vows, the groom breaks glass.

Crowd: Screaming, singing, yelling, chanting.

Me: Crying.

Husband: Crying.

Jakob: Sleeping.

Scene 5: Christiane’s brain after coming back from Israel.

Voice 1: You guys were right. There was no need to be scared. I’m so happy we went back.

Voices 1, 2 and 3: Let’s not forget this. Let’s not forget this. Let’s not forget this.

When our company updated computers more than a year ago, the new Macs came with video capabilities… just a tiny square in the center of the top, something I easily ignored. But some of my coworkers were quick to cover it with tape. “We don’t want IT accessing our computers and watching us at our desks!” I hadn’t thought of this and quickly covered my camera with tape too. I was 99.9 percent sure IT wouldn’t find me picking my nose or doing anything blackmail-worthy, but the very idea felt like a violation of privacy. Once I’d covered my camera with tape, I added another layer. They’re trying to spy on the wrong girl.

As time passed, the tape was replaced with a band-aid left over from a photo shoot (unused, in case you were worried. Or grossed out). The band-aid eventually fell off, leaving my camera exposed. I never used the camera on my computer (didn’t even know how if I wanted to) so gradually it wasn’t even an issue anymore.

Until last week when a box popped up on my computer screen at 6 p.m. from my next door cube mate to have a video chat. I was caught off guard. I looked at the video of myself that appeared and then broke into giggles when I saw him flash across my screen too. We made silly faces, stuck out our tongues, crossed our eyes, moved our heads across the screen and waved. For a few minutes, I forgot all about the status of my layouts and everything I had to do until he ended our session to get back to work.

Then I was sad.

So I decided to video chat my friend across the cube farm. Her confused and surprised face was priceless as she tried to figure out what was going on. We experimented with sound (it went through, but we didn’t want to make too much noise and disrupt our coworkers). We freaked out when someone walked behind our desks, only to have them stop, approach our screens and start laughing. And then join in on the fun. Laughter started spreading across the cubes. My friend’s cube neighbor even popped up and started waving and making faces too.

I know the goofing off didn’t help get anything done, but it made us laugh and it made us happy, which was enough to fuel the rest of our evening staying late to finish our projects.

I’ll start with the first words I told my mom: “I’m OK.”

What followed was the bad news. “But I’ve been in a bad car accident.”

The latter is probably a mom’s worst nightmare, especially if it’s coming from someone else, saying your son or daughter has been in a car accident. That’s one of the reasons I feel so lucky, the fact that I could call my mom and start off by telling her I’m OK.

It happened last weekend at 8:20 on a Sunday night. I’d gone to Minnesota to visit my friend Thor and watch his sister Quinn compete in the Miss Minnesota Pageant. Quinn’s friend Alexis came along for the ride. After the pageant, we headed up to Brainerd, Minn. to Thor’s family’s house for a day on the lake. We never got the nice, relaxing day I had been looking forward to for weeks.

It was raining pretty hard and I was at the wheel. Maybe it’s the young man in me, but I’ve always felt sort of invincible on the road. I don’t drive like this, but I always feel in control. I’ve put in a lot of miles with work and road trips and I always felt like a good driver. Thor had just made fun of me for driving too slow. But a little voice in the back of my head told me to drive 55 mph. When you drive faster than 55 and there’s a lot of rain on the road, you can hydroplane.

I don’t know if that’s scientifically proven, and I’ve probably driven faster before, but on this day, I could hear my Aunt Becky’s voice.

When I was 13, Becky’s daughter Bree was killed in a car accident. Bree was riding to a wedding with her boyfriend, and a bus hit their car. Bree hit her head on the window and died later that night. She was less than a month away from her 21st birthday.

I think about Bree a lot, but rarely about the way she died. I’d rather think about playing Ghostbusters in my basement with Bree and the tasty funnel cakes she made me as a kid. I never saw Bree in the hospital. I never saw her boyfriend’s car and I never thought about the accident. I don’t even know all the details, and I don’t want to.

So I was driving north along the highway at about 55 – just like Becky had said years before when talking to no one in particular – and I saw a car out of the corner of my eye. She was crossing the highway, going east onto a county road. Everything moved in slow motion from that point forward. I honked. Slammed my breaks.

She must see. She’s got to see me.

I turned my wheel slightly to the right.

If she stops or at least swerves, I can miss her without driving off the road completely.

But just as that thought crossed through my head, a split second after I saw her in the corner of my eye, she kept rolling forward, and …

Boom.

The impact played over and over in my head that night. I can see it right now. My car T-boned the passenger side of hers. I can see my front bumper crunching, and the indentation in her car. I can see glass breaking in slow motion. I can hear the pop of my air bags. My car spun around and ended up backwards on the side of the road. I don’t remember the spinning; I didn’t even feel it. All I remember is letting go of the steering wheel and looking over at Alexis, seeing how afraid she was, and then looking back at Thor to see the pain and fear in his face. I knew they were scared, but I also could see that there was no blood and they were still talking and they were going to be OK.

But what about the other car, I thought.

The other car had slid down a hill, but I couldn’t see inside because of the rain and the distance. My door wouldn’t budge. Alexis’ door wouldn’t open either. Then I got Thor’s door to open and climbed out the back. As I ran down the hill, it was the first time that I got scared. What was I going to find?

The girl opened the door and got out crying. She was so young and so scared. She said something about her friend, then I think she said sorry. All I remember is the fear in her face, and I knew what was inside couldn’t be good.

Her friend in the passenger seat was hurt. I don’t think he was responding at first. She kept trying to get him to say something. He had a cut above his right eye. He looked at me and asked, “What’s happening?”

I told him we’d all been in a car accident and not to move. I’ve watched enough sports to know someone who could have a serious injury shouldn’t move.

I got out my phone and dialed 911. Cars had started to stop. There was another man there and I talked to the operator and started back for my car.

The police arrived next and I tried to keep going back and forth. I didn’t know what to do at this point. I had Thor call his parents.

The ambulance arrived, and I knew there was nothing else for me to do but comfort my friends and make the one call that part of my didn’t want to make and part of me did. I wanted to hear her voice, but I didn’t want her to have to worry.

I climbed in the front of the ambulance to get out of the rain and I called my mom.

Mom was so happy to hear from me. I wished I could have been as happy to make the call. I wished, of course, that none of this had happened, but it had.

“Mom, I’m OK,” I said as I could hear her face change to that look of concern she gets, “but I’ve been a bad car accident.”

Then I told her what happened. I’m OK. Everyone’s OK. That’s what I feel blessed to say now.

I don’t know about the boy, but the police officer told me that night he was going to be OK and the insurance man told me the same days later. He spent a couple nights in the hospital, but he was going to be OK. Thor and Alexis were both on crutches, and it looked like Alexis had a softball in her leg that night, but she’s going to be OK.

That night I couldn’t get the flashback of the impact out of my head. I thought about Bree and I thought about my friends and my family. I had bad dreams, like other cousins getting in car accidents. It’s weird what we dream about when we’re scared.

But, like everything, I guess there’s some good that I experienced. The people.

All the people who stopped. One man was a Iowa State trooper and stopped before the police arrived. He stayed throughout, answering any questions I had. Another man named Jeff lived close by, saw there had been an accident and came to check if everyone was all right. Jeff and I exchanged numbers and he sent me a text that night to check on me and my friends. He said that he and his wife worked at the courthouse in the city nearby and to let him know if we needed anything.

I woke up the next morning and I had two texts. One was from my cousin Sarah and another from my cousin Kate.

Since I’ve been back, everyone who knows about the accident has given me a big hug and I can feel the love in their embraces and words.

When I got home late Monday night, I got what I had needed that whole time. My mom gave me a big hug. I got to tell her one more time that I was OK.

I don’t know if someone was looking over us that night or what. I’m not sure I buy that. Why would someone be looking over me and not Bree? All I know is we were lucky, and we’re OK, and I don’t feel invincible anymore.

But I do feel loved and blessed to have my friends and family, and to have people in my life that I can tell, I’m OK.

As a kid, Saturdays were my favorite day of the week. It meant cartoons and pancakes with my dad in the mornings. But perhaps more remarkably, it was “Junk Food Day.”

My family ate beyond healthy the rest of the week. A maximum of 7 grams of sugar in our cereal. Two chips with our sandwich (natural peanut butter, of course). Steamed veggies with no spices and all the low-fat meats we could eat. It might sound boring but it was normal to us, and we became quite attached to our natural foods.

On junk food day all rules were off. We could eat anything we wanted. My sister and I planned for Saturdays, saving up to eat sweets and chips and all kinds of nonsensical foods. We almost had a heart attack when, shortly before a summer vacation to Houston, my grandfather joked that there were no Saturdays in Texas.

Junk Food Day was fairly easy to enforce with a home-schooled family in Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming. My parents devised clever schemes to explain why other children ate desserts at neighboring tables at restaurants. “Their junk food day must be on Thursdays,” my parents would tell us. And there were always exceptions—holidays, birthday parties, and of course, Saturdays.

I really didn’t mind this pattern. I learned to love vegetables and fruit and whole grains and tiny health food stores at a young age. I always had a day of splurging to look forward to. And even on Saturdays, I didn’t go overboard because I realized the effects of junk food. When you eat food that’s bad for you, you feel bad.

Per my doctor’s recommendation, I have recently adopted a high protein and gluten-free diet. As a kid I counted grams of sugar to make sure food was acceptable weekday fare, no I count grams of protein. I owe my parents thanks for giving me healthy guidelines as a kid (even though I haven’t always stuck to them as an adult) that help me to make these current dietary changes.

So what does my grown-up Junk Food Day look like? Three weeks in Europe this summer — all the crepes and waffles and chocolate I want. Until then, I’m counting protein grams and eating rice bread. It’s really not so bad.

Note: In honor of Father’s Day, I am doing all pieces this month about my dad.

I’m no theologian, but I think that one trait of a virtuous person is a lack of hesitation when it comes to making good choices. The people I admire do the right thing with speed and directness — as though the wrong thing isn’t even an option. It’s bold and it’s heroic — think of the firefighter who plunges into the burning building to save someone. Think of that scene in Forrest Gump when he beats up the guy who hit Jenny at the Black Panther party. My dad, so far as I can tell, has this lack of hesitation in spades.

When my maternal grandmother was ailing and couldn’t live alone anymore, it was Dad’s idea that we build a room on the back of our house for her. He knew it would be expensive, and he didn’t know how long Grandma would stay or what that stay would entail. But it was done, and he never expressed an iota of concern about his convenience, wallet or anything else. Why does that stuff matter? he would have said, if we would have asked. It’s the right thing.

When our parish priest called in the middle of the night for help because there was a plumbing problem and the church was flooding, dad hotfooted it up there with a Well duh, it’s my church mindset. He and some other parishioners worked for hours to fix the problem. He batted away praise with that same Duh, what else would you do? mentality. To be sure, Dad’s hairtrigger decision-making trait bleeds into a frustrating tendency of saying unbelievably offensive, violent or politically incorrect things. But his actions speak louder.

This isn’t to say that he’s careless or overly impulsive. I talked to him on the phone a few days after the laziness of my brothers and sisters had elicited a scolding of Biblical proportions from Mom (Literally — she canceled Easter.). He was saying how one of them had left a dish in the sink nonetheless, and his first impulse was to throw it at the back of the offender’s head. “But I didn’t do my first impulse,” he said. “You never do things when you’re angry.” (Not that Dad ever would have actually thrown a dish at anyone’s head. Except a Democratic legislator, maybe.)

I’m also no sociologist, but I think that a lack of hesitation dwindling in my generation. A friend once said, “The fault of the human psyche is overanalysis.” I don’t know if it’s true, but if so, the world these days has that fault in spades. Many times I’ve on-the-one-hand-but-on-the-othered about a decision that, deep down, I knew was easy. Try thinking out loud about a decision, and see if your listener will give you an excuse to do the thing you feel like doing rather than the thing that’s right. As often as not, she will. I have.

This isn’t to say that thought should be banished from the decision-making process. Life is complicated, love is complicated, jobs and families and finances are all complicated. You can’t shoot first and ask questions later. I read the other day that a week’s worth of the New York Times has more information that the average person in the Middle Ages was exposed to in a lifetime. More information can mean better — although more complex — decisions. But in a world going grayer and grayer, there is some black and white left. And we could all learn a little from my Pops, who, when it comes to the right thing, doesn’t even let the wrong thing have a say.

I was on my way to what was supposed to be a relaxing brunch. The rain had recently stopped after a torrential downpour that had lasted the entire night before. Maybe in hindsight I should have recognized the poetry of the karmic meltdown that I was nearing.

The sky was mostly cleared up when I climbed into my car and flipped the switch to remove the remaining drops from my windshield. Now, I’m not the most mechanically knowledgeable person in the world, but it seems like one of those universal truths: thy wiper blades on thine automobile shall not cross (which is what mine had done). When I stepped out of the car and gave my best tugs on both blades and got no reaction, I knew it was out of my hands. I called my mechanic, Jessie.

After he told me that my wiper mechanism was completely mutilated, I was well on my way to my second $500+ car repair in the past six months. My car isn’t a luxury ride, but it’s not a clunker, either. I bought it the summer before I left for college, and in my naïve little mind, I’d hoped to get another five years or so out of it before I had to start making these repairs.

It’s not just the car. Since I graduated a year and a half ago, there seems to be a lurking expense around every corner. There’s always an uncovered dental visit, an unexpectedly huge electricity bill or a barrage of wedding gifts to give.

When I told my mom about the latest costly repair, she predictably offered to help me out financially if I needed it. While it was nice to know the assistance was available, I told her thanks but no thanks. I like to think that I’m a big boy now and I can handle my own problems.

“The frustrating thing,” I told her, “is that every time I think I’m getting ahead or at least caught up, there’s a car repair waiting for me. Or something. There’s always something.”

She laughed.

“Welcome to real life.”

I immediately thought back to a conversation I would have with friends during college. As newly minted “adults” who were out on our own for the first time, we resented it when professors or parents would refer to “the real world” as something we weren’t yet a part of. As if what we were doing at the time — attending classes, paying (some) bills and working part-time job — somehow didn’t qualify as real.

But it hit me when my mom said that, that this is real life now. Maybe I’ll look back at this stage 5, 10 or 25 years from now when I have a family and a mortgage and most of my big plans are either under way, completed, long forgotten or completely refocused from what they are currently, and I’ll wonder if here and now was ever “real” life.

It sure feels like it. While the whole car situation ultimately came back to financial concerns, it wasn’t only about the money. My girlfriend, Amanda, asked me throughout the day and throughout my increasingly grumpy mood whether I had the money for the repair. It was a rhetorical question; I had the money and she knew it. But it was the frustration of the situation that got me so down. I don’t want to pay for $500 car repairs. We’re adults now, and while we finally have the freedom of a paycheck, we also have the chains of financial responsibility. And there’s the rub.

Welcome to real life, indeed.