Annie Tsai

On Friday, I was standing with my daughter along with other parents and their four and five year olds waiting for the school gate to open. My oldest was over on the other side of the parking lot  hanging out with his buddies at the big kid gate. Some parents and I were chatting about the PTA meeting from the night before when I looked up as the driver of a grey truck was slamming on his brakes to try and avoid t-boning a white suv in the intersection maybe 15 feet in front of me. 

The truck and suv both came to a stop in a perfect capital T just about a foot apart. My daughter clutched my left leg and a toddler who was dropping off their sibling to school started crying. The driver inside the truck looked very upset and he was clearly yelling at the other driver with arms flying. At least his windows were up so we couldn’t hear. For the rest of the morning, all I could think about was how physically close it all was to where our kids stand every single morning.

The thing about intersections is this – they’re places where straight lines collide and where paths that had nothing to do with each other can suddenly matter or completely change life trajectories. 

We often think of intersections in terms of logistics and danger. Stoplights. Rules of the road. The split-second math of who yields and who barrels through. But, they are also catalysts in some of life’s most important stories. They’re where people bump each other accidentally, where strangers become friends, where two people lock eyes for the first time. They’re where conversations are avoided or had, where someone turns away or leans in, where a hand extends across a divide, or where momentary silence moves us to permanent distance. 

Intersections are where love and life begin and sometimes, but they’re also where love and life end. 

When we are very young, our lives run parallel to everyone else’s – think parallel play. We are the nucleus, and everything revolves around us. As we grow, we start to notice that life is not made rich by parallel lines alone but is much richer when we weave threads together and create intersections.

And yet, those same intersections are where the greatest risks live. A crosswalk can be a moment of community or a moment of catastrophe. A conversation can be a point of healing or a wound that never closes. 

Maybe it all comes back to physics. Intersections are where all the action happens – where cells divide, nuclei split, and energy is exchanged. Sometimes we’re like electrons, drawn into bonds; other times like charged particles repelling, desperate to stay apart.

If you’ve read my columns for a while, you know I constantly think about balance. And I think in this case it’s less about balance and more about context. Here, I think what matters most is that we need to especially care about this when children are watching. And frankly, they are watching a lot, and especially in those moments when we don’t want them to be there. Standing fifteen feet away, hearing, smelling, and seeing everything that’s happening and how we are reacting to them. Our community’s children are constantly watching for when these intersections do or don’t occur and what comes of them. 

My four year old has a way of reminding me of this. Weeks or even months after I’ve said something, she’ll bring it back up – usually at the most inconvenient time – and point out how it doesn’t match what I’m doing or saying now. It’s frustrating, but it’s also the gift of perspective. She reminds me that intersections happen in both space and time. Who we were collides with who we are becoming as perspective evolves opinions and stances. Time and information are gifts but also forcing factors in evolution. Hopefully, it also sparks conversations about growth. 

It’s insanely humbling. Young kids especially hold on to your words as literal truth until those words collide with your present actions. In that clash is a chance to explain what you’ve learned that changed your mind, gained perspective that makes room for nuance, or even admit you got it wrong. I’ve been there, you probably have too. 

I’d gamble that on any given day, each of us crosses a hundred or more intersections in all of these flavors. Most intersections are forgettable but once in a while, that one crossing is the moment that changes everything. The key is remembering that all of them matter in the end as the richness of our communities, our families, and our individual lives isn’t in the straight lines we try to preserve, but in the moments they converge. And, please slow down on the roads, everyone.