03/22/2022
Lynn Murphy Mark
I have two wonderful all grown up children, Jackie and Ted. When each was born I discovered how the heart makes room for another living being and fierce love extends to all children throughout our lives. They have made me proud, made me laugh, challenged my thinking, brought me joy, taught me things I needed to know, and been great traveling companions. The happiness of motherhood has prevailed.
I have also been terrified during my stint as a mom. Serious illness has stricken each of them and I have been on my knees praying and begging God to heal them. My unease over their diseases went so deep that I thought I would implode and be of no use to anyone This is a terror like no other – to see a child suffer and to have little to offer to make it better other than to turn them over to the care of professionals. I am forever grateful to the medical professionals who brought them back to health.
There are other frights that are required courses in the school of motherhood. One involves late night calls that pull one out of sleep and into a confusing fog of “Whaaat? What happened? Where are you?”. I consider myself fortunate to have had very few of those calls, but the memory of one stays with me. I was jangled out of a deep sleep once when the voice on the other end of the phone was Ted himself. “Uh. There’s been an accident…” “Where are you?”, I asked. “In an Emergency Room…”. “Where?”, I tried again. “Some hospital”. I was getting nowhere fast, but it was reassuring that he could speak, even if he was skimpy with the details.
I asked to speak to an adult in the room, who identified Ted’s exact location. He said, “He’s remarkably intact for the violence of his car accident. You can come and get him any time.”
Now I had a little more information to go on. I dressed in a hurry and drove through the pre-dawn lighting to the hospital. When I got there, he was waiting for me in the pediatric room, for which he was way too tall. He had a big gauze bandage on his left elbow, otherwise he was fine.
I still wasn’t clear what had happened. We left the ER and I asked where his car was. On the side of Highway 44, just before the Big Bend exit. OK. I said we would go there and rescue his car. He was quiet for a minute and then he told me that the car was not driveable. I imagined some crumpled fender digging into a tire.
I was not prepared for the tangled, crushed mass of his little Hyundai Accent. The car was a total loss. Although it’s a small car, what saved Ted was the steel frame that surrounds the driver. His only injury was getting glass fragments in his left arm as he braced himself for the inevitable roll over. He had fallen asleep, hit the guard rail, and flipped over twice. Thank God this happened after midnight some time and there was not a lot of traffic on the highway, or he could have lost his life.
A saving grace for mothers is not knowing the other shenanigans that our children get into and out of as they grow up. That’s a good thing. Not until kids are adults do they start divulging some of the details of the crazy stunts they pulled. I for one am grateful to have been in the dark until such time as I could see the humor in the dumbass things kids do!
1 thought on “I’ve never been so scared”
Your thoughts on parenthood absolutely resonated with me. Here is my twin brother’s story:
My father had a saying: “The Angels often protect fools!”
My twin brother was one of those who was often protected. One night my parents got a call from a rural hospital 2 hours away. The physician told my parents that their son had been killed in a one car accident and he needed for them to come and ID his body.
My parents sprinted to the car wondering if the car they had just bought him had caused the accident or was it my brother’s reckless nature or was it just pure bad luck! As they drove through the dark night, they cried off and on until they arrived at this small rural hospital in the middle of nowhere. The tow truck with my brother’s car on it was there. My father said the car looked like an accordion.
My parents went inside, conferred with the physician, and then went to ID my twin brother’s body. As my parents walked into this room full of empty gurneys except for the one with my brother lying on it, Mom began crying anew while my father walked up to take a closer look. As my father stared into my brother’s face, my brother’s eyes opened as my father jumped back in complete surprise!! My father yelled at my brother, “Boy! They said you were dead!” at which point my brother said, “That’s what I kept hearing the whole ride here!!!” Still astonished, my father repeated, “Boy! They said you were dead!” Then my father added, “What the hell happened?” As my brother struggled to sit up, he replied with full earnestness, “The road curved and I didn’t!”
My parents said that they aged every time they heard of another dumb thing my twin brother had done. I was just glad that they never knew what my older brother was doing, running with a group of friends who collectively managed to get into many levels of trouble! With the wisdom of parents who had 3 children in the same age range, they were infamous for saying, “Being a parent is like being on a roller coaster that you are not steering. Many a night, your only prayer is Let the Angels protect them from themselves!!”
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