I'm really shaken up right now. →[More:]We went to the Pumpkin Fest today. We went on a hayride. We bought pumpkins. We ate ice cream and unusually huge cream puffs. We drove home.

I turned to look at my dirty, tired kids in the backseat. I turned back around and there was a blue minivan coming straight at us, driving the wrong way down the busy highway. My husband swerved around it and stopped us safely on the shoulder.

We both assumed the car was passing unsafely. We declared the driver an asshole. We looked behind us. It was still going the wrong way. "Something is wrong," he said. I reached for my cell phone.

As I was struggling to get my shaking hands to dial 911, the car veered off the road into the woods. I did not hear the crash, but we saw the trees falling down. They were not small trees.

The 911 operator picked up and we told them to send help. Cars stopped. At least half a dozen. People went running into the woods to see what they could do.

My daughter said, "We should help them!" I told her we did help. We called an ambulance. Lots of other people had stopped. We would only be in the way at this point. Lets go home, I said. We'll get some dinner. They'll be OK, I said. Airbags and seatbelts and help on the way. They'll be OK.

But I don't know that they're OK. I don't know that they could be. And for fuck's sake, it was a MINIVAN. The kind of vehicle you buy to fill with children. And so here I am 8 hours later, compulsively checking all the local news sites, trying to find out who was in that van and what happened to them.