My mother is the epitome of mothers: warm, loving, generous and untiring, but also tenacious, efficient, and full of sass. She will soften the edges, in a long foregone attempt to teach me to soften mine, but she’s never feared telling it as it is, much like her mother who is also a ball of sass. I’ve always considered myself fortunate to have her; I don’t know where I’d be without her yelling from the other room or over the phone. She’s tried to keep me in line and, in all honesty, I’ve been a bit of a nuisance from the moment she found out she was having me, i.e. a surprise, to the 18 years of raising my determined (to do the wrong thing) self. Teachers and family friends have commented that my mother deserves sainthood for not leaving my sisters and me in a box somewhere.
My cousin got married over the weekend and in mentioning that to friends who asked if I was open to plans, up came the story of when my oldest sister was getting married. Also known as the day after I broke my mom’s nose. Technically I didn’t do it but I definitely was the catalyst, starting the chain of events. Mom said we were running late and had to go because of course my middle sister had waited until the last minute to do all of the pre-wedding things. Being the stubborn brat I am, I demanded 20 more minutes. Mom sighed and acquiesced, as she is apt to do, and in the next five, one horse slid in the mud, hit another, and both went through the 16’ gate Mom had just closed. The chain and snap, too light for that gate, busted. As I seem to do with lacrosse balls and elbows, Mom caught the flying object with her face: metal bars and a ton of horse poundage behind it.
Surprisingly for that amount of force, Mom still had a face. In fact, her nose was basically fine except for being a little bit crooked and the blood everywhere. I was screaming, the horses were panicking, and my crazy mother, after tying a lead rope around the gate, said she should go find something to clean up all this blood because the rain probably wouldn’t get rid of it. She didn’t realize it was coming from her.
Because I was so young, she had to drive home and I sat in the passenger seat holding a bag of ice to her face. She handled the country roads home well and I had half an hour to ruminate on the effects of our decisions. The consequences of my actions hadn’t affected me though, much like a drunk driver killing someone else but walking away with only scratches.
When we got home, Dad was annoyed but not like my sister, raving like a lunatic about how she needed new tires and her boyfriend needed the hem of his borrowed suit pants shortened. Mom sighed and told our father to go to the mechanic with her; the hospital could wait. So my mom sat at the table, hemming the pants with a broken nose. I held ice on it again.
They went to the hospital hours later while I stayed home while my sister who yelled more and then eventually left me to fend for myself, a relief by that point. Mom walked through the door later laughing about how she’d been bumped to the front of the waiting line because when she said she got hit by a horse, the nurses all thought she was delirious from a concussion. They assumed it had happened in a car accident. And being the strong, but also insane, person she is, Mom told the doctor to pop her nose back, no pain medication, into place because she had a wedding tomorrow. They were still convinced she was delirious.
She sat up all night to sleep rather than risk the nose being pushed out of place by the pillow and had no bruising the next morning. Unfortunately I did not inherit that as I bruise from bumping into the table, poke checks when laxing with the bros, and slamming my car door too hard. On the way to the wedding, heading west on 70, the truck in front of us had an improperly tied ladder fly off the back. Dad swerved and my sister, in the car behind us with her boyfriend, also did. That’s the reason I still, a decade later, try not to drive behind loaded up trucks. Mom remarked calmly that it was a good thing Dad had taken her to get her car worked on the evening before; it would have been closed if they waited until after Mom saw a doctor. Mom’s selflessness and her love for us probably saved two lives that day. Our choices and the consequences impact others.
Years later, I didn’t contemplate it very much. College tends to use up about 75% of your brain’s thinking area. I was set to move out and had badgered Mom into coming down instead of Dad. She was way better at getting my ridiculous amount of stuff into a small amount of space and I liked talking on the way home. She sighed and acquiesced as usual, saying she’d take a day off work and drive down to get me.
I was finishing up my final project, due in a couple hours along with a presentation, goofing off with my housemates when one of them picked up my phone to tell me I was getting a call. Putting the mascara wand down and huffing, I took it from her. Mom was on the other end, far away, saying something bad had happened but she was fine and I needed to do a good job on my speech. My blood froze and I demanded to know what had happened. She said there was a small accident as she headed west on 70 but not to worry, just that she might be a bit late... Dad had to come pick her up so try to pack light, I love you.
Emily and Kate had gotten the gist of the one-sided conversation by this point and came over to calm me down, telling me to put the last couple slides of my PowerPoint in and they'd repack my stuff (throw away anything not essential). How was I supposed to give a presentation when my mom had been in an accident?
I walked over to the comm building numbly, observing all the careless kids around me without a worry. My professor said nothing as I told her what I knew, just that she'd move my presentation up and I could leave after to handle things. I went on autopilot, giving the speech so effortlessly that no one except the classmates who'd overheard knew what was going on; even the professor was surprised at my poise. But the truth was, I had no clue what was going on. I wished Mom hadn't even told me because not knowing only made it worse as the hours ticked by.
I tried not to hug her when she stood in my college house, knowing she was sore from whiplash. My friend Kellie, the one with EMT training, jumped on her wholeheartedly before admonishing her for not getting checked out. My mom, being Mom, had refused the medics and insisted on coming down to pick me up. She had surprisingly few injuries; I smoothed Neosporin and arnica gel on them that night and she was fine, surprising seasoned doctors.
The car I'd grown up in, learned to drive in, which was going to be mine the next day, was gone in an instant, totaled by a tractor trailer. I grieved for it but Mom was alive. As overjoyed I was, that didn't erase the pain on both sides. She was the best driver I knew. How did this happen? My car was gone but also my sense of all that was right. If she could get hit, how good were my chances? She was understandably gun-shy behind the wheel but now I was too, absorbing it from her. And in a sense, she blamed me for insisting she come. Dad could have gone instead and that would have changed the whole course of things. I countered that she could have left in the morning rather than after a half day at work. We didn't talk for days.
A couple years later, everything is normal again, as much as it can be after that. And I still have the selfless mom who learned about horses, snowboarding, and lacrosse because I did, loves me even when I say hurtful things, and serves as a reminder that our choices ripple outward from us.
