You Can't Be Too Careful

December 31, 1958 was a hallmark night for my family, but not in a cheery, greeting card way.
It was the night my parents were in a car accident and my mom went to the hospital with a broken hip.

The story went this way, although I'm open for corrections since it's been so long ago that I heard the first-hand version of it:

They had gone to a New Year's Eve party, but, atypically for them, left early because the weather was getting bad. Sure enough, a freezing rain had already iced up the streets, but apparently Dad thought everything would be fine when he pulled in behind one of the city trucks spreading cinders.

Unfortunately, it was only an illusion of a safe passage home. I don't know if they hit a slick place on the pavement, or if Dad got impatient and tried to go around, but somehow they slammed into the truck, hard.

Mom might have not have been hurt so badly except for the fact that she tried to put on the brakes even though she wasn't driving at the time. Bracing herself on the floor, like she was slamming on the brakes, was too much for her, and the bone that broke in her right leg had to be operated on to insert a steel pin that she ended up taking to the grave with her.

I was 12 at the time and in junior high. My brothers were 8 (in 3rd grade) and 9 1/2 months old. I don't know, but I guess my dad's family got together and decided we were too much for him or my grandparents (who only lived blocks away from us) to handle on their own, because we were quickly parceled out to his siblings for the weeks while Mom was in the hospital and in the early stages of recuperation.

Dad's sister, Sue, her husband and three children lived near my school, so it was decided that I stay with them. My brothers went to his brother, Dave, with his wife and daughters. The boys loved the farm and my uncle's family loved them. I heard they would have liked to keep them forever.

I can't imagine a nicer family than my Aunt Sue and Uncle Lloyd's. Still it was not easy for me to live with a family so different from my own.

There were rules, of course, but they weren't tough or confusing. We did our homework after school every day, and didn't put Friday's off until Sunday night. All the kids, including me, had chores, but everyone helped each other. When homework and chores were done, we could and did play, and when it was too cold to go outside, we could even skate on the concrete floor in their basement.

Most odd to me, the adults didn't go out drinking, or stay at home to argue or fight. I kept waiting for them to drop their "company manners," but that was just the way they were, all the time, hard as it was for me to believe or understand.

I spent a lot of time trying to stay out of trouble and on the good side of adults when I was growing up. It's not that I was a bad kid or anything, but I was uncertain about what it took to keep adults from being angry, with me or each other. Without anyone ever telling me, I felt it was my job to keep things around my house as calm and peaceful as possible.

I didn't have much success in that area.

Neither did I learn to trust adults to be constant and consistent in doing their job of taking care of me. I grew up knowing that they had a lot of responsibilities and that it was up to me to take care of my own needs as much as possible and bother them as little as I could. It wasn't until I stayed with my aunt that I discovered there were some adults I could trust.

One day while I was staying there, I forgot to take either lunch or lunch money to school. When we were dismissed for lunch, I simply left school in the freezing cold and headed in the direction of her house. I got lost along the way, but somehow I finally got there.

Instead of having her get angry or upset with me for forgetting my lunch, leaving school without permission, and getting lost, all she did was fuss at me for not calling her. I was surprised that not only was I not in trouble, but that I even had the option of asking for help. She fed me and took me back to school, but she never once raised her voice nor teased me about it at all!

Living there, even for a short time, was a real eye opener for me. I didn't know people who lived in such a different way than my parents and their friends or who day in and day out treated each other with so much kindness and consideration as a matter of fact.

I don't mean this to be a criticism of my parents in any way, but life with them, though loving for the most part, was almost always volatile and full of drama. It was a jolt to come home and become my mother's right-hand helper again.

Not only was I back to watching the boys, I had to help Mom with nursing duties that I really didn't want to do. Wheelchair-bound, Mom wasn't her usual blur of activity, and I had to spend more time with her than I wanted to at the time. It was an opportunity that could have brought us closer, but didn't.

I wish I'd known then what I know now, but, of course, I didn't.

I think it's a lesson most of us learn too late--to appreciate, enjoy and get to know the people we love before we lose them. We take for granted that someone so important to us will always be there, whenever we need them, no matter what. Then the day comes that they're not, and we can only think of all the what-ifs with regret.

I do not blame myself for being thoughtless and selfish at times; I was young and immature. Like most kids, I did no more, no less than was expected of me--good grades, clean room, politeness and obedience.

We were a classic family of the times. Dad went to work; Mom stayed home and took care of everyone. It came as a shock to all of us when she suddenly needed us to take care of her, even a little bit, for a little while. I will always believe that the major reason she died so young was that no one took care of her enough to keep her healthy and hopeful.

Mom finally got back on her feet and back to her usual role, but somehow the world was a bit different for all of us after that. We didn't take our status quo as much for granted. We didn't take our family dynamics as much for the norm. We didn't think of our extended family as much as the familiar strangers they had been before we had lived with them as part of their family.

My mother had lived though the nightmare of having her children scattered, as she and her brothers had been after her mother's death. We had all been shaken with the brush of a new kind of uncertainty and change. Like mom's leg, our family had been broken apart, and knitted back together. We had been separated, and finally reunited, but our view of family had been forever altered because we had lived a new truth.

Sad to say that while I greatly enjoyed my stay at my aunt's, I was genuinely relieved to return to life as I understood it. I was used to being the odd duck at school--the kid who was home sick with asthma almost as much as I was in class, the awkward child in public who needed a joke book to make conversation, the imaginative recluse at home who found comfort in books while an emotional storm raged outside her room. I wasn't used to "normal."

Who can figure out why their life takes all the strange twists and turns along the way? Who defines what's normal for one family and what is right for another? Who knows how all the things we experience will eventually influence and form our characters, but it's surely true that we are a product of everything that touches us, our lives, and the people in it.

I think the lesson in all of this is that you can't be too careful when you find an opportunity to love, learn and be loved. Those are the opportunities you need to grab hold of. You can't be too frightened to live your life to the fullest and you can't take your life or the people you love for granted

I believe we would be better people, more real, honest and in the moment if we really did live as though we were dying, because the truth is that we are. Every day we live we are one day closer to our death, and how we live it is up to us.

None of us know how long the thread of our life is or when it will unravel or suddenly come to an end. While I have it, I want to live it. While I can, I will tell the people in it that I love them, because tomorrow they might not be able to hear it.

I want to relish all the moments I'm alive, whether I'm contently alone or spending time with the people who are important to me, even if it's only through a phone line. And when the day comes that the essence that makes me who I am is ever gone, please let my body go and remember me as who and what I am and was.

I would not change my life if I could.

There is no guarantee that a second chance would help me do a better job or make me a stronger, kinder, better person. It was hard enough to live through it the first time. I don't know if I'd want to attempt to change anything even if I could do it all over again.

There are moments I would like to revisit, faces I'd love to see, words I'd love to hear, and any number of things I wish I had noticed, paid more attentions to, and remembered more deeply and clearly

Perhaps, someway, somehow, someday, I will,
if I pass this way again.