It was indelible etched in her consciousness. She could remember it like it was yesterday, and in someway, it defined her as to who she was. She would only talk about it in a low hushed voice, and never very often. It was Christmas and she was 4 years old. They were returning from her grandmother’s house. Presents were open, food was abundant, good time were had by all. And everything was packed away in the station wagon. Her Mom and Dad in the front seat, merrily and animatedly talking about the Christmas Eve party. The cousins and how big they had gotten, the presentation of the food and all those yummy deserts, how Uncle Monroe once again had a little too much wine. Dad had just rolled the driver’s window down alittle to throw his cigarette butt out while they waited at the stop light. In those days everybody smoked and seatbelts were optional. There was no government studies, no laws, no click it or ticket campaigns, and child seats were almost un-heard of. She was sitting in the back seat of the car playing with one of the new dolls she received, with her two older brothers in the way back. Bundled up like Eskimos, they anxiously looked over the numerous paper grocery bags of presents. While the smell of baked ham, sugar cookies, and green bean casserole wharfed up from the foil wrapped plates in the bag on the back seat next to her. Her mother, with her MarloThomas hairdo, wearing a bright flowered dress under her navy blue Pcoat, turned in the front seat to look back at them. “Now don’t you kids dig into those bags, you can play with your toys after we get home”, she stated merrily. “Maaa” came the synchronize reply from her two brothers. Then came the crash, as the car was violently hit from behind. It would later turn out that the driver of the other car was drunk and reached down toward the gas pedal to pick up the cigarette he dropped. Stating that he never even saw their car stopped at the light. But in the long run that really didn’t matter. She remembered the front bench seat of their car tearing forward before her and seeing her parents ejected out the doors as the car spun wildly out of control. But what she remembered most, what scared her to death and was the center of years of nightmares was the sound. As the car was joited forward, there was a great air sucking sound that was followed by a base reverb boom as the gas tank of the Rambler Stationwagon exploded. She was thrown forward and down onto the rails that the front bench seat was mounted on, cutting and gashing up her legs. She became wedged between the upturned seat and the floor. She remembered the dizzy spinning, flashing orange and the sudden hard stop as the car careened into a telephone pole, crushing in it’s side. For a while it all seemed to go in slow motion. Orange and yellow cellophane tongs licking up from behind the back seat between her and her brothers. The sensation of heat and smell of gas. The way her middle brother, who was closes to the back of the back seat, wavered and reached his hand toward the side window as if seen through an orange red mirage. Sudden the door flew open and hands reached in and grabbed her. Yanking and pulling her out, she yelped as the top of her head was ripped by one of the seat springs. She was shoved into someone’s arms as everything sped up into a chaos pace. There were people running and yelling everywhere. Their car had hit a pole right infront of a fire house. Held tight and hugged, the unknown person just keep repeating over and over, “you are going to be alright honey, you are going to be alright”. She could see her mom on the ground by the curb, bleeding from her head and being helped by a stranger in a long coat and hat. She saw her oldest brother stating to climb out of the broken back stationwagon window as the flames ran up his brown hooded coat and her dad reaching into the flames to grab him. The car was quickly starting to be engulfed by fire. There were firemen running out of the firehouse caring hoses and one blonde haired one, with big boots and wearing white underpants, an open fire jacket and gloves swinging an ax toward the side window of the car. As the window shattered the flames came leaping out ferociously. Reaching in, the fireman pulled out a burning bundle and started quickly tearing at the brown flaming wrapper. Ashamedly she would admit that she didn’t realize that the bundle was her other brother. It just didn’t look like him, burned face and hands charged black cracked and bleeding. She thought it was a doll. Then there were lights and ambulance and police. People wrapping bandages around her legs and placing her into her mother’s arms, as they loaded them into an ambulance. The last thing she could remember seeing before they closed the ambulance door was police holding and dragging her screaming father back away from another ambulance and the way the water sprayed out like a sprinkler from the fire hoses. It would be a month before she saw her oldest brother again. His hands and face still wrapped in gauze. And no one ever again spoke about her other brother and why he never came home.
It was an indelible past etched in her consciousness. It was what made her who she was. There was a certain indefinable wholeness, a far away look in her eyes that said, I have seen and I have survived. It is what made her strong, made her motivated and forced her life. As if being so close to death for that fleeting moment gave her power. And though she kept it hidden, like the scars under her pant’s legs, she worn its influence everywhere she went.
