A Patchwork Life: writing, teaching, learning more each day writing, teaching, learning

Today, in the second half of a no good, very bad, horrible day, I came to a stop at a red light in the misty rain and very shortly thereafter heard the sound of breaking glass as someone crashed into my rear bumper.

As car crashes go, it was relatively minor– no real damage to my car past some scratches, and while the other car got the worst of it, the other driver was not hurt. I’ve got some soreness in my neck and right shoulder that I’m hoping goes away tomorrow, and I was the only passenger in my car. But I’m still a little weepy and trembling about it, because it made me flash instantly back to another accident.

If you’ve been a reader of mine for a long time, you know that a little over three and a half years ago, I was in a car accident, also not my fault, but one that totaled my car, activated my airbag, and shattered my right forearm. I still have a steel plate holding the bones together, and while it took me surgery and months of physical therapy to regain the use of my hand, it took me even longer to be able to drive a car again without a panic attack.

Today, when I felt the impact, felt my car jolt forward, I revisited a moment I thought I had forgotten in the blinding flash of pain when my arm broke. I got out in the rain and dealt with the trade of information and assurances that I wasn’t angry at the poor out-of-towner who’d gotten lost looking for the freeway (I even gave her directions), and then I got back in my car, because my sister was waiting for me and needed me to be there. And part of why she needed me entailed me taking her to the same hospital in our old neighborhood where I’d taken Lucy at five weeks to get a spinal tap for possible meningitis, where I’d stayed with her overnight at seven months while she rehydrated after a bad bout of rotavirus, her so tiny in one of those cagelike hospital cribs and me crying beside her because my baby was sick and I was away from the other baby for the first time and oh Lord, how was I going to deal with how heartbreaking being a mother was. And then where I had an emergency appendectomy, and then later where I came with my shattered arm cradled in front of me and more tears running down my face.

When I finally got home, hours after I had expected, I managed to keep myself barely together, making macaroni and cheese and listening to stories of dancing and science experiments, until my husband got home and I collapsed on his shoulder in the kitchen, where my girls couldn’t see me. And now I’ve talked to friends and eaten dinner and some cheesecake brownies, and I’m snuggled into bed and feeling better.

But oh, how long these heartbreaks haunt us.