I go home and do the routine cleaning--dishes into the dishwasher, towels hung in my idea of neatness, toys put into toyboxes, feed the dog, feed the cat and maybe a walk around the block. A typical day, in a typical American home with the kids safely learning their ABC's at the neighborhood school.The phone rang and the caller ID shows the school is calling. Oh dear--have you come down with a fever? Forgotten your assignment? I smile with a bit of hesitation hoping it won't be necessary to go back and face the office in my t-shirt and sweatpants...Mom clean-up comes later in the day. Sunglasses and a jogging set work for walking or driving kids to school.
Fast forward twenty years. I am at my office getting ready to leave for lunch and the phone rings. The caller ID shows a hospital I'm not familiar with. 'Hello, I need to speak to the mother of (my daughter)." My heart skips a beat. 'This is her Mother.' 'You're daughter has been in a very serious automobile accident. She is alive but in serious condition. We are assessing her injuries and I have no other information at the time. She is conscious. Can you get here right away?' 'I'm at least 12 hours away but I will be there by this evening. Can I talk to her?' 'No, but she is asking for you.'
The tears come. I cannot stop them. My baby is too far away for me to hold her in my arms and what if I don't get there in time? What if it's worse than they say? What can I do from here? I grab my purse and drive like a maniac to my house. I tell her father I am leaving NOW. I drive with an angel on my shoulder the 12 hours to my daughter and it takes 10 hours because I don't see the cars, there are no highway patrolmen, no deer jumping in front of my car...only a jack rabbit running for his life down a lonely highway in the middle of a deserted highway someplace near the mountains and as I get closer, ice on the road. I slow to the highway speed limit and skim across the snow patches praying to a God that doesn't protect my beautiful child to please keep me on the road and maybe pick up my car and just drop me at the emergency room. I run a red light in the small town she has been taken to by ambulance with her friends who were in her car driving home for the holidays. One has a broken leg. One is OK--but no, she's waiting for a life flight to a metropolitan city that handles extreme injuries. A red light appears behind me and I push the pedal harder to hurry through this ugly place that holds the joy of my life in its not-state-of-the-art hospital walls.
I slam into the ER driveway with the local cop hard on my tail. I throw open my door and jump out only I can't go in because the Barney Fife, gun pulled and Official Police Badge shining in the bright lights wants to arrest me for running that red light. I tell him he needs to step away because I'm going in. He asks me if I realize I have run a red light and broken the law. A strange, animal instinct rushes through my veins and I stare at him through eyes of Mother Dares You to Step An Inch Closer. I walk away from my car and I hear him say, 'Don't do that again, or I'll have to take you in.' I keep going through the doors, up the stairs to the third floor of this old, tired hospital with it's shiny floors and depressingly sad yellow-green walls to the nurse's desk. They take me to my daughter. She looks up at me when I enter the door and tears fall down her face. She grimaces with pain. Her back is broken Her ribs are broken. There are small cuts on her face and her hair is matted with blood and pieces of glass. She gasps for air as she cries and I hold her arms and rub her shoulders and smooth back her hair from that beautiful face. God give me strength to calm her.
The agony of guilt for being the driver of the vehicle her friends were in heading home, in the fog, when the tractor trailer pulled in front of her and dumped the backhoe into the windshield, slamming everyone into positions that break bones and puncture organs, becomes as painful as the ache in her back and sides. It will be several years before peace comes to any of us, if ever.
That phone call could have been the school calling to say, 'There's been a shooting. Please come to the fire station for further information and to pick up your child.' It could have been the worst day of every parent's nightmare. That my child wasn't there to pick up. It could have been the end of my life as I know it because someone took away 'The Joy of My Life' forever. We got a second shot a life and it's joys and miseries. We were lucky.
Hold close the ones you love. Send your children into the world with the words, ' I Love You' until they think they get tired of hearing it. Never take for granted that life will be as it started
at the end of the day.
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