DC Metro Horror

I'm 31 weeks pregnant, and though, theoretically I only have 9 more weeks of gestational enormousness, I'm sick of my meager maternity wardrobe.  I get itchy when I haven't engaged in frivolous retail therapy in several weeks, so I decided that today's fun field trip for the Pumpkin and me would be to head into downtown Washington, DC, to check out H&M's maternity line.  On the Metro.

We had a great time, as I knew we would.  We spent lots of time talking about the choo-choo on the way there.  She excitedly repeated no fewer than a hundred times that we were on the choo-choo as we rode on the train.  She tolerated our limited shopping time, partly because she was able to purchase a new Hello Kitty outfit, but mostly because of the promise that we'd get to RIDE THE CHOO-CHOO AGAIN! 

The ride back home, though on the heels of rush hour, was uneventful.  We easily got seats (it's hard to ignore a swollen, pregnant woman and her chatty two-year-old), and she and I again discussed our current state of affairs, which was that we were RIDING THE CHOO-CHOO!  We returned home, exhausted, but completely satisfied with our afternoon.  I was proud of myself for coming up with a cheap thrill for my kid, and considered myself lucky that we live so close to such a fine public transit system.

And then I got online and read the news:  6 Dead, Scores Injured in Metro Collision. 

We had just been there.  It happened while we were still on the train.  It could have been us, I suppose, though we were on a different line and in a different part of the city.  In reality, we probably stood a better chance of getting into an accident on the car ride to or from the Metro parking lot.  But still.  It's hard to imagine what I would have done in that situation, especially with a small child, and being so pregnant that it's not easy to move without a lot of effort.

It's the "Sliding Doors" syndrome, something I used to think about a lot, but have learned to let go of after accepting the "everything happens for a reason, even if I don't understand the reason" outlook I now view my life with.  We all have dozens of close calls every day, even if we're not aware of them.  (I missed another Washington opportunity, a much happier one, this past weekend when I failed to visit my local ice cream haunt (as a pregnant woman, I'm on a very strict ice cream diet) and missed out on seeing President Obama and his daughters there.)

But "everything happens for a reason" is probably of little comfort tonight to some people here in the DC metro area, people waiting for their loved ones who take that route every day, to walk through the door, and tell them about their ordinary day.

An original DC Metro Moms post.  Diana regularly blogs at Caffeinated.