Angels at the Crosswalk

Arlo and Rex Kraus / Photos by Korina Marie

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“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” — Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

I remember reading that line for the first time and appreciating its stark simplicity: death arrives without notice. Accidents happen when we least expect them. In Joan’s case, one moment she and her husband were moving through the ordinary ritual of a meal; the next, she looked over, and he was gone.

Shortly after her daughter passed away. The compounded grief culminated in a haunting novel, solace for anyone navigating personal loss. In a single line, she captured how an ordinary instant can collapse into something irreversible. I think about it often. Danger and grief linger just beyond the horizon, no matter how much we plan for ideal outcomes. I learned this as a child after my father’s death earlier than many, which I count only as a blessing.

Mothers are miraculous beings. We move through life trusting that tomorrow is guaranteed— anchoring ourselves in routines, planning dinners and meetings months in advance. Dutiful plotting brings sanity. It has to be this way; otherwise, rational fears would swallow us whole. We choose to thrive knowing deep down that at any moment something devastating and beyond our control could upend our lives.

Raising children requires constant surrender. Letting them step into the world demands faith that they will return in one piece, shaped by the lessons that guide them best in the end.

My boys spread out like wild animals.

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Our household has never been orderly or predictable. It runs on spontaneous tendencies rather than strict routine. Growing up on the coast, surf culture suited us. Here, boys find endless adventures to keep them busy, and neighborhood teens drift in and out of our house. Our front door rotates like an ’80s sitcom—someone is always barging in unannounced, and no one questions who or why.

In San Clemente raising kids is a community effort. We look after one another’s children as if they were our own. They flock to different families and are welcomed by all. Mike sometimes grumbles about the house being overrun by loud teenagers, but I remind him this is what we wanted: a home that feeds and shelters them until they need it. They stream in shirtless, shoeless, sunburnt, and starving after long days in the water, filling us in on their parents’ lives, their small triumphs and struggles.

There’s an old-school camaraderie in surf towns not yet revamped to meet the standards of wealthier coastal enclaves, unfazed by modern suburban boundaries. This is partly what drew us here nearly eight years ago. I wanted our boys to absorb the ocean as part of their identity and for community to contribute to their childhood. I figured the sea was the perfect arena: a stadium of shapeless serenity, where competition is scored by individual drive. Rex took to it fastest and most passionately. Locals quickly adopted him, teaching him how to play the ukulele, encouraging his ’70s-inspired style, bringing art supplies for murals, attending his surf competitions like surrogate parents. He befriended all the aged misfits and hippies. For a kid who loves art and nature, San Clemente has been ideal.

But with freedom comes risk.

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REX FOR RVCA

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The summer we moved here, a boy Leon’s age died in a slow parking-lot stunt gone wrong. A tree and plaque mark the spot. That tragedy introduced us to the jetty crew, who became like family. Rex grew close to the boy’s father, spending summers at San Onofre State Beach—barbecuing, surfing—stepping unknowingly into a space carved by loss.

Each of my sons has found his rhythm here. Arlo thrived socially, making friends and earning good money as the only ice cream cart on a local toddler beach, where popsicles are an impossible treat to pass up. Rex, restless in school, wrestles with ADHD and the self-doubt of an artist, yet his creativity shines. Leon spends every dollar on fishing gear and trips. Hayes, by contrast, is a straight-A student—insightful, fair, already expressing gratitude for his childhood in ways most of us only recognize in hindsight. At eleven, he lives boyhood to its fullest: tree forts, tag after school, and two scars on his chin as his only injuries so far (knock on wood).

As for broken bones, I’ve lost count. A dirt-bike accident left my second son airlifted, five surgeries, five months in recovery. In London, my oldest tore part of his ear skateboarding. In Mexico, Rex staggered from the ocean with a gash across his forehead. Twice, Fourth of July ended in ER casts. Stitches, splints, X-rays, scars, pins—the shock never dulls.

Whenever I travel, a knot tightens in my core, heavier the farther I am from home. I am always bracing for the call that will knock the wind out of me.

Raising four boys has forced me to be braver than I ever wanted. Their innate sense of adventure both awes and terrifies me. They are up before the sun, boards under their arms, electric bikes wobbling downhill toward the pier, their path lit by the crisp golden light of October—like scenery borrowed from a vintage postcard.

Each of them is fearless in their own way. They crave action over screen time. They hop on trolleys, skate streets lined with eucalyptus and salt, launch off cliffs, dive off rocks, surf wild swells, and dodge sharks spotted in the still waters around them. Their freedom is as beautiful as it is terrifying—careless yet instinctual, faces lifted to the wind, hair plastered to their necks. And yet small accidents can grow into tragedies. The ocean is vast and they are small, but alive in it in ways many of us never will.

That call came on Saturday. Mike and I were eating lunch with David Harris, the ocean stretched as endless blue backdrop. Our conversation drifted from thoughts on Charlie Kirk to thoughts on faith. He asked if Jesus had revealed himself to me as he predicted he would months ago. I began to explain what I suspected about a path of divine purpose when the phone rang. Our youngest son was on the line, hysterical and impossible to understand.

His brother had been hit by a car. Unconscious. Seizing at the crosswalk. He thought Rex was dead.

On the drive over, my whole being slipped out of me. Paralyzed by uncertainty, I flashed back to Rex’s newborn face—his thick blonde hair with platinum streaks, his lips tucked tightly in a tense expression I tried to soften that first night. I knew even then he was uniquely himself. And that he would be a handsome man, thanks to prominent German Italian features.

Mike had helped him rebuild the vintage moped he was riding. At the crosswalk he went too fast. A driver looking the other way clipped him, sending him airborne. “He flipped in the air like a cartoon,” Hayes recalled. When the boys caught up they found him seizing until a man appeared “out of nowhere.” He put his hands on Rex and the convulsing stopped. He told them Rex would be okay, then left before the ambulance arrived. His name is not in the report. We only know he was there because the boys witnessed it.

Another off-duty fireman and paramedic stopped too, clearing the crowd and administering aid. A woman who follows me online recognized Hayes crying and made sure he rode in the ambulance with his brother.

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By the time we reached the hospital Rex was conscious, lightly scraped, miraculously unharmed.

“Someone was looking out for him today,” the nurse told us.

He had not even a bump on his head. His bloodwork showed no evidence of seizure. This baffled the staff. Had the boys not seen it with their own eyes, no one would have known it happened.

In the hallway, Hayes sat beside me with tear-streaked cheeks, exhausted. Strangers had prayed over Rex enough to make Hayes believe, finally, that everything would be okay. Watching them, he decided—more firmly than ever—that he definitely wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to help people this way.

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Calls from friends pinged nonstop in the waiting room.

Was Rex okay?

Could he surf the incoming swell on Monday if so?

The paramedics handed him crutches on the way out along with a plastic bag of shredded clothes—his favorite T-shirt, the one with the notorious rapper’s face sliced in half.

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He was ordered to rest his brain in a dark room for forty-eight hours.

By evening, the autumn sun pouring into our living room had softened the jagged edges of a harrowing afternoon. We collapsed beneath one roof—intact, wearied by yet another brush with violent fate—humbled by passing strangers and the fleeting gestures of roadside angels. Their brief confirmations echoed what I had long intuited: a path once tangled with doubt now revealed itself, pruned and luminous, manifested more in healing than in the words or visions I had mistakenly been waiting for.