Where Are the Cherry Blossoms of Yesteryear?

Japan’s unofficial national flower is the cherry blossom. Cherry blossom translated to Japanese is “Sakura.” Cherry blossoms typically bloom in mid-March to late March, and are best viewed in the last days of March and early days of April. There are many festivals and celebrations for the opening of cherry blossoms. According to Japanese culture, cherry blossoms represent the ephemeral, short-lived nature of life, because the viewing of the blossoms only lasts for a short time…

With love above the crashing waves approaching, the 405 was merely a waiting room magazine article. On the highway blaze, the red mph needle was the object of my affection, so I pushed the limit. With time at a premium during the coaching daze, I had to be careful not to slip into usual social hibernation mode. She lived in Laguna Beach, not exactly next door. So I drove in excited haste to see my ex, sometimes hitting 85+ speeds in my aging Forerunner. Granted, the flow of traffic slid only slightly ahead or behind, so I wouldn’t call my driving reckless, but instead efficient. Logically, 85 mph is the better option between itself and 70. But Math doesn’t lie. Nor does Physics. I relearned Math only after March 8th, 2008. But Physics was thrust upon us with the horrifying news that day.

That was when my soccer player, Andrew Sakura, lost control of his dad’s sports car while exceeding 100, 110, 120 perhaps? It seems odd to think that a year ago I was driving faster than I should, as well. He was only 18, I was 30…

I remember how my sister slowed pace when she had her first kid, Noah, who will turn twelve in April. Twelve years should have taught me the lesson, but alas, we are creatures of habit, of rage, or hubris, of shortcuts….And how odd it is to remember that a year and a day ago I would have become frustrated with a friend’s calculated navigation. He lost a friend earlier in life because of reckless driving, so now he never exceeds the speed limit. At worst, really, extra time is the final chorus in your favorite song. What else is there when balanced against nighttime vigils and tearful visits to the grave? What else is there when I see Andrew’s parents up in the stands at our soccer games and think of the hidden memorial on the back of the north goalpost? All the sudden it doesn’t seem so odd to see a naked Yossarian sitting on a branch of the chestnut tree.

I’ll save you math and give you the solution…fidget the numbers on your time if it doesn’t make sense: the difference between driving 80-85 mph to Laguna Beach from Redondo Beach vs. driving at approximately 70 mph is about two minutes. Because there is transition time between freeways 110 and 405 and 133, plus all the damn time fighting PCH traffic in both cities, the difference really is two minutes. Two more minutes of anticipation, two more minutes to remember to pick up a bottle of wine on the way, two more minutes to remember forgotten prayers, two more minutes to humorously recall the opening scene of Office Space with Samir cussing and Michael Bolton rapping and locking his car door, two more significant or insignificant minutes. Either way, it’s insignificant when balanced against the windburnt image of Andrew’s parents crossing the June graduation stage to receive Andrew’s honorary diploma…insignificant when balanced against the vision of the empty seat in a Santa Clara lecture hall that should be filled by Andrew who would be in year one of pre-med…insignificant juxtaposed with the memory of the overflowed Church for Andrew’s funeral listening to my poem that I couldn’t read myself because I knew I wouldn’t make it through without breaking down…insignificant when balanced against the days we lose when we are blindsided by the reality we forget—our friend is no longer physically with us. Two minutes.

My friend who is a CHP officer says that 80 mph is not a safe speed to travel on the freeways. There simply is not enough reaction time available to swerve, to brake, to avoid incident. The way I see people drive today, my guess is that 70 mph is not safe either, but it’s better than 80. But we don’t want to hear that when the officer pulls us over and we use the argument, “I was just keeping up with the flow of traffic.”

It’s two weeks after Andrew’s death. I’m heading south on the 405 to Laguna, and mental fatigue has set in permanently, probably about 12 days prior. But the necklace hanging from my rearview mirror keeps me going. It is a necklace made by Andrew’s friends. They are fundraising for the plaque that currently adorns the north end goalpost on the Palos Verdes High School soccer field. Few people know the plaque is there, but it is there like Andrew on a PK. But back to the necklace…it is simple in appearance—a single black thread for the tie, its medallion a shrinky-dink like piece maybe a half an inch tall and a couple centimeters wide with Andrew’s signature on it. I know it will be with me forever, with the Forerunner, and with my next car, and with the car after that. I wonder how many times I will tell the story—to a passenger in my car, to my next crop of students, to a student five years from now who knows nothing of Andrew and wonders about the suspiciously-grinning handsome kid up on the wall in my classroom. I don’t need the necklace for sentimental reasons, I need it to shock the common sense back into me when habit tries to take over. Two weeks after Andrew’s death I do not need a necklace to keep me driving safely; my tear-stained cheeks serve that purpose. But today I do. The memories are not as strong. The anniversary comes once a year. The South Holiday Soccer Tournament—the same tournament that saw Sakura winning three games in PK’s for the Sea Kings a mere 15 months ago—was in December, and the cold has passed. It is baseball season right now, life is busy, time is still at a premium, and slow drivers still frustrate. But the necklace does not lie…it’s story never changes.

How many gray hairs appear on the crown of a parent worrying if his son or daughter will drive home safely? How many times does a parent feel guilt over morbid thoughts of deadly accidents firing through synapses? How many near misses result in lessons learned? How many of those misses end up as missed lessons? How many mental health days should we give to the officer who informs the family that their loved one has perished on the road? How horrible must it be to go to bed every night outliving your only child? How many minutes of sleep are lost? How many minutes of sleep could be saved with the two extra minutes of driving time?

Perhaps the math doesn’t add up. After all, Andrew’s daredevilish needs contrasted with his angelic heart which factored not into his decision to drive irresponsibly fast down Crenshaw Blvd. Yet how many of us would be okay with our personalities and lives defined by our driving tendencies? Sometimes our flaws are attributes and our attributes flaws. Because Andrew was so acrobatic and loved the thrill of flying, he will go down forever in local high school soccer lore as the best PK goalie we’ve ever seen. Tragically ironic, it was this thrillseeking personality and bad judgment that cost him his life. And now it is a year later and I worry sometimes that he may have died in vain. I wonder how many soldiers die in vain when we don’t remember their sacrifices. Anti-war or not, we should wonder how many souls float ambiguously about needing a boost from our recognition of duty. We should also wonder how many driving accidents go by the wayside past blind onlookers desperately clinging to their two minutes?

What was hurtful to those close enough to Andrew, like myself, was the mixed reaction post-accident. Many were quick to point fingers, singling out his dad for letting him use a sports car. Many called him a typical spoiled teenager putting lives in jeopardy. Spoiled? I don’t think so and I don’t think it matters either. But typical teenager putting lives in jeopardy? Yes . But how many of us can say we’ve never put someone’s life in jeopardy. Whether it was by speeding on the highway or driving “slightly” intoxicated to save a cab’s fare and a next day’s trip to pick up the car…we live in glass houses. Our hypocrisy is as transparent as the lasting tears of Andrew’s loved ones. The reaction should have only been one of pain, grief, and some relief that no one else was killed. One physically scarred, and many emotionally scarred, but only one life taken. But also one life of us all together remembering the lesson. Yes, life is short and precious—we all know that. A premature death eternally reminds us this.

But we can’t drive irresponsibly. The physics problem is this: a mass moving at a high enough speed is a tremendous force, a weapon. A car is a tremendous mass, and moving at any speed it is entirely dangerous. I know people think I’m insane when I say the automobile was perhaps one of the worst inventions ever, yet Andrew’s death is yet another reason why (there are many reasons I have, but this is the only pertinent to this essay). We are never fully equipped to drive these automobiles. There is no guarantee that reads, “You will get out of your car alive.” So the only thing we can do is drive safely and responsibly to try to prevent the tragedies that turn sobers into alcoholics, pacifists into subjects of endless rage, the composed into maniacal stress cases, and happy fathers and mothers into childless adults.

Andrew is gone and with him he took a lot of energy, a lot of hugs, a lot of high fives, a lot of PK saves, a lot of ability to turn smiles into frowns, and at least some of the peace of mind of two very heartbroken parents. I would like to say that the answer really is as simple as a math or physics problem but both are merely metaphors for more confusion. I don’t know if we need more driver’s education. So many turn into thrill seekers once behind the wheel no matter how many Red Asphalt videos, diagrams, training sessions, etc. are thrown at them. I would like to think that my lectures to my students help, the necklace helps, the memorials help, the anniversaries help, the plaque helps, the appearance of the Sakuras at our soccer games help; but I don’t know. On Friday I offered an automatic A for the entire second semester to the first senior in each of my two AP classes who could tell me the one thing I desperately wanted them to learn from my class (not a bad gift considering it is senioritis time, but I needed the message to be clear). I told them this the first day of class way back in September and asked them to remember this above else: drive responsibly because we can’t afford to lose you, it’s too painful. Between my two classes, I had one student give the right answer. And go figure, he was the student with the highest grade in my class first semester. I had a feeling it would work out that way, but one never knows. Kids will surprise, whether disappointing or pleasant. I guess I have to keep teaching this lesson, though. Maybe we need more necklaces. Maybe we need to stop seeing commercials on TV with cars zipping around corners at dangerous speeds. Maybe we need cars that shut off above 85 mph. Why does a car need to go that fast? Really, why can a car exceed 100, 110, 120 mph? With technology so advanced, why aren’t breathalyzers built into a car’s driver recognition system? Why aren’t we saving lives? Where are the Cherry Blossoms of yesteryear?

Here is the poem I wrote last year for Andrew’s funeral:

“Consider the Shimmering Stars”

Consider the shimmering stars at night
Endlessly dancing the Heavens above
Consider we are all brought here today
Beneath their expanding universe of love

Look closely, one more star has joined the ball
And suddenly there’s new light on the stage
Dazzling in acrobatic radiance
A fledgling comet quickly comes of age

Stretching far across nighttime’s paradise
Iridescent hope in velvety black
Prayers to one day reach the comet’s tail
When our thoughts carry us tenderly back

After the sunset winds turn dusk to dark
We gaze into the crisp late-wintered sky
A cherry blossom flutters in our sight
Watching the tears, tears that fall from our eyes

Indispensable tears of sacred life
Water that causes plants and all to grow
Joyous tears, sorrowful tears, tears of all
Cultivate…harvest what we need to know

We too will star upon Heaven’s marquee
When our predecessors give us the sign
Until then we remain here for our friend
Who never let a PK cross the line

Consider the shimmering stars at night
Deciding to give our keeper a start
At teaching us love and togetherness

Just look to the skies, then look to your hearts