Motherhood – Lakshmi Bertram

Pumpkin Patch

I have a pumpkin patch, though not through my own effort, desire, or design. My kids planted it this spring based on a Native American planting system termed The Three Sisters where corn, pole beans, and pumpkins are planted together. Corn, a heavy feeder, benefits from the beans which bring nitrogen into the soil. In turn, the corn stalks provide the perfect climbing frame for beans. Pumpkin plants, light feeders, provide shade to the corn and beans. These three foods, purportedly staples of native cultures that provided storable crops for winter, were planted thus to capitalize on symbiosis.

Growing in our garden this year, where we don’t have much else planted, the Three Sisters thrive. Cleverly planted in integrative harmony, each providing support, nourishment, and caring to the others, they seem very like a family. It’s been fun to watch them grow–particularly as this has not been an easy year for growing things not only in our region but all over the world. High heat is crippling much of the US and where it is not drought conditions there have been freak storms and flooding. One wishes there were a way to scoop up all that flood water up and deposit it on the hard-baked dirt, rutted with crevasses in the drought regions.

For plants to survive this kind of weather, they do rely on human intervention.

I looked out the window yesterday afternoon and my harmonic, happy plant family was wilted. The pumpkin patch looked downtrodden, drooping in the heat, and the edges of the corn leaves were dry and brittle. It was 95 degrees, not hot for us for July, but far hotter than I prefer. However, having seen the state of things, I knew I would never be able to sleep that night if I didn’t get out and water the garden.

It was hot, as I said, so I donned the only appropriate apparel, a bikini, and ventured out. I dragged the hose up the yard, waded deep into the wilted pumpkin leaves and turned the soaker on them. It made me feel better to be doing it. I imagined the cool sensation I always feel when suddenly relieved of unbearable heat, I imagined a desperate thirst being quenched by cold water.

There were pumpkins hiding everywhere amongst the foliage. I have no idea what we will do with them all, should they survive to be ripe and edible, but it was a joy just to see them; dark green globes with pale streaks of lighter green and just the beginning shading of orange in places. There were beans as well, climbing up the stalks and the first thickening of corn ears showed at various junctions.

I love to garden and haven’t been able to do much of it lately. It may have been that love-induced absorption in plant-life that prevented me from hearing the distant rumble and roll of the thunder. I first became aware of the storm when raindrops began to fall, warm as bathwater and the size of dimes. I thought about hanging up the soaker and heading indoors, but it was not clear from the partially over-cast sky how much rain would be falling. I opted to persevere, thinking too much water would probably be better than too little.

That is how my twelve-year-old daughter found me. The front door flung open as she popped her head out into the rain and shouted, “Mom! What are you doing?!”

As it would happen, that early rain had become a torrent. I looked up. The whole sky was dark, rain falling in sheets.

What was I doing?

I was watering the garden in my bikini in a down-pour.

Oh, well, at least the pumpkins are happy.

Fried Potatoes

I don’t often cook for my family anymore. I work full-time and don’t have the energy—or perhaps it’s the inclination—at the end of the day to go into the kitchen and prepare a meal. Fortunately, my husband (unemployed since last December), has taken on the role of house-husband and most evenings he cooks a meal for our family of seven.

I do miss cooking, so I often cook on weekends, preparing a family favorite or experimenting with something new.

Last Saturday morning I made Fried Potatoes as part our breakfast. I always fry my potatoes in the same skillet. A large stainless steel revere wear pan with a black plastic handle and a bottom warped from years of use. It’s not a great skillet but I can’t get rid of it because it belonged to my mother.

She gave this skillet to me years ago when the ratio of my six kids to hers tipped over; hers were leaving just as mine were still arriving. She knew I needed a larger skillet to keep my growing crew fed, so she passed it on to me.

I grew up poor, many people did, and food was sometimes hard to come by. We never starved, but neither did we have those convenience foods my children now enjoy. We didn’t eat boxed cereal, or bags of chips, cheese slices, or jars of juice or soda and almost never had candy bars or ice cream. We ate whole foods like oats and wheat cereal, fresh fruits and vegetables, and lots of and beans and rice.

My mother had six children, as I do, and every night she set our table with a meal. We were never hungry but staples are not the most fun foods to eat. My mother has an indomitable sense of fun. She believes it doesn’t matter how much you have, but what kind of experience you choose to create with what you have that makes life enjoyable. With my mother, I have sat at the kitchen, dressed in a nightgown and make-up, playing cards, I have learned to make grape jelly from grapes we picked in our back yard, I’ve made bread and biscuits, pizza and cinnamon rolls all from scratch. I’ve had picnics and sleepovers where we cordoned off one room for music and danced. I had very little from the standpoint of what you could measure in material wealth growing up, but from my mother I learned how to take what you have—no matter what that is—and make it fun.

On Sundays, all my growing years, my mother made us a big breakfast just for fun. It was a celebration of family and also a chance to eat our favorite foods. Traditionally, it consisted of pancakes with orange sauce and maple syrup, soya sausages and, of course, fried potatoes. My mother is a master at putting a complex meal together, and she was brisk, the heat making her face glisten as she hustled about the kitchen, assigning tasks to her fledgling cooks. We each had a job to do and mine was often to watch the potatoes.

My mother cut her potatoes in slim wedges, peels on. Today, I peel mine and chop them into one inch squares. The shapes of the potatoes may differ, but the procedure is the same. Chop them, drop them into hot oil and let them fry. I learned how to flip them without dumping them over the edges of the pan, I learned the timing for how long to let them fry before they needed flipping, I learned when to sprinkle the salt and how much was the right amount of pepper. I learned all I needed to know and took it with me into my own motherhood.

Over the years, amidst the bustle of the Sunday cooking, my mother often commented on how this skillet was the same make and style as the one her father had used when made fried potatoes for her and her sisters in the tradition of their family.

On Saturday, I repeated the fried potato ritual as I had many times before. I grasped the handle of the warped-bottom skillet, ready to flip and felt the ghost of my mother’s hand in the plastic. I felt a link, stretching back through my bloodlines to my mother then beyond her into my grandfather. I realized, I was a third generation potato fryer, and felt this simple act unite us as family as absolutely as the color of our hair, or the shade of our skin.

One of my children has left home and the next one down is right behind him. I fed four kids with the potatoes I fried on Saturday. I stood before the heat, with potatoes popping and frying, remembering my ancestors and wondered which one of my kids would inherit this skillet once my need for it is done.

Garden Ahoy!

Each year as frost gives way to budding grass, and the stark shells of the trees get fleshed out with foliage; we begin to plan the garden. It’s a favorite late-winter past-time, a ritual my husband and I have re-played for years.

In our early life together, we had big dreams. Back then, we didn’t merely wish to grow a couple of vegetables, a few herbs and shrubs. We wanted to live off-the-grid, to be self-sufficient. At 19 and 24, as we ourselves were just starting to grow, we read everything we could find about passive solar heating, grey-water septic systems, composting toilets. We read how to build pole-and-beam straw bale houses, earth bermed houses, and tire-rammed earthships aligned to face the south so the long, angled windows running across the front would let the most light in during the winter months to grow indoor vegetables and the least light in during the summer-time to keep the place cool. In between planning and dreaming, life moved on. We worked our day-jobs, and one baby, then two and then two and two more came along. Somewhere on that journey, the dream slipped away, lost to the reality of raising six children.

But, the love for gardening never budged. Each year, as February drew to a close, we would haul out the seed catalogs and plan out our garden. Many years, that was as far as we got and the dream of the dirt patch of veggies remained a dream as every Saturday was given over the Soccer games and grocery shopping, clothes shopping, and trips to the mall. We let go because we had to; stretched as thin as we were, even one more thing would have been one more thing too many.

Even though we didn’t have a physical garden, the love for it remained, dormant like a seed over winter, waiting for the right conditions to spring forth.

Once in a while, extreme stress is the greatest catalyst for change. Raising six kids is not easy. It is constant hard work. Rewarding, yes, but close to all-consuming. Anyone who has worked at that kind of pace knows, eventually, the foundation begins to crack. You can only give up everything you love to do for so long. As the stress builds up, it wears you down and like a small animal trapped in a hole, you begin to look for ways out of the rut. In our attempt to survive the pressures of our lives, we remembered gardening. We recalled plotting out the land, ordering seeds, and those long hours spent in the early spring sun. It had been years since we’d had a proper garden, but last year, we decided to plant again.

Last winter, we plotted, last spring we planted. We were still over-worked, over-tired, over-stressed, but when we stepped out into the yard, things were growing and we were eating them. Fresh basil and tomatoes off the vine, two kinds of squash, more pole beans than we knew what to do with. We had cucumbers, kale and collards, a few brave carrots and beats, and a spattering of spring mix as our earliest crop of the season.

It was inspiring to see things grow, to feel the cool of the earth and the warm sun shining. It was encouraging to see we actually had time, if we made the effort, that we could take at least a little of that long ago dream and weave it into the lives we led now. Our garden was a success!

This February we began, even more inspired.

As of this day, May 14, 2010 we have planted: spring mix, carrots, kale, collards, spinach, tomatoes, bell and jalapeno peppers, three kinds of squash, corn, potatoes, watermelon, peas, beats, turnips, radishes, onions, sunflowers, cauliflower, basil, oregano, cilantro, chamomile, rosemary, strawberries, and probably a few other things I’m forgetting. We’ve been eating fresh greens and radishes for a couple of weeks now and everything else is coming on well.

I don’t think either of us are seriously considering a life off the grid at the moment—at least not before the kids leave home. These days, our garden is haven, a sanctuary of peace and contentment. It is a chance to remember our dreams. Moving through life, so many things fall to the side, pushed away by responsibility. Doing this one thing, simply for the love of doing it, makes our lives better. There’s simplicity in gardening: when weeding, we weed, when tilling, we till. There is nothing else beyond these simple tasks, nothing to worry over or plan for, there’s just the dirt, the green things growing and the bright sun overhead.

Me and 54, 999 other peeps

U2 have long been one of my favorite bands, belonging in that treasured top-ten who have a song for my every mood. Mostly, I like to play them as loud as I can, so when I sing till my throat aches no one can hear how off-key I am. I have cried to U2 songs, felt my heart crack down the middle and dump tears out like a late summer rain. I have danced till I was dizzy, “It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right, she moves in mysterious ways.” Before I knew U2 was anything more than an Irish band I was destined to love, I was already loving their music completely. When I heard they were coming to a Stadium near me, of course I wanted to go.

These days, times are hard and tickets aren’t cheap. This is where the i-pods come in. Last June I finally joined the ranks of the technologically blessed and got myself an i-pod. My kids had had theirs for years, which is one reason I didn’t have mine. I kept buying them, but somehow I never got to keep one for myself. Last June, I finally did. Sleek and slim, it’s bright orange so no one can mistake Mom’s i-pod for their own. We have one desk-top in the living room dedicated to our i-tunes. It knows who you are when you link-up and brings you your music. We all put our music onto this one machine and, occasionally, we share. For me, this means I have techno and William Control interspersed between the Chieftains, UB40, Sade, and, of course U2. For my girls, this has meant that I wasn’t the only one who became smitten with the energetic Irish band. Unbeknownst to me, they downloaded my music and next thing you know, we were all Bono-crazy. When they heard U2 were heading our way, they scraped together their pocket money and bamboozled their father into buying four tickets. We were going to the concert!!!!!

That Thursday dawned bright and clear–I think. I was actually too excited about the evening to even notice the day. I worked at a frantic pace, planning to get out of there early, snatch up the girls from school, rush home, get changed, and rush back to Charlottesville, VA–almost one hour away. I wasn’t the only one heading to the concert and I caught snatches of my favorite songs drifting from neighboring offices all day. I left work mere minutes behind schedule. I got home in record time. The girls and I had 15 minutes to shed our ordinary human clothes and turn into beautiful, concert-going divas.

In deciding what to put on, we had a few tricky moments. The best-looking garb is not always the best thing to actually wear. Short skirts can literally freeze your tail off in a brisk wind and heals can become objects of torture by the end of five hours. Going to a concert and screaming and cheering and dancing like crazy is fun. Going to a concert to be cold and in pain is not. In the end, we all wore walking shoes, jeans, and nicely tailored tops. We carried jackets and our bags with refresher make-up and left the real exotica to our choice of eye liner and shadow. We got out of the house in a record 25 minutes.

Charlottesville is a lovely, winding 55 minutes drive from our house. It was a bright, lazy afternoon. I remember that because we were listening to “Beautiful Day” on the way in and I thought, “How perfect.” We got to interstate with no trouble, then funneled along with perhaps two thousand other people into the single exit lane and were bumper to bumper for thirty minutes. From living in the country, my girls idea of a traffic jam is three cars lined up at a stop-sign, so this was a big deal. They had all kinds of bad ideas, such as running down the highway beside the truck or climbing into the bed and dancing. Their worst idea was to ram into the back-side of that flashy Beamer who opted to cut in front of us coming into the turn. We did none of these. Instead, they re-applied lipstick and eyeliner and chatted about what kind of damage our F350 Diesel extended cab could do to that Beamer. I confess, I might have participated just a tiny bit in that last discussion.

Eventually, we passed the TV crews coming on live to show the traffic back-up. We leaned out the windows and screamed like idiots. We hopeed they got us on camera.
My son called;
Son: “Mom, have you seen the traffic? There are supposed to be 55,000 people there tonight.”
Me: “Yes, I see it, we’re stuck right in it.”
Girls (shouting in background): “Did you see us on TV?”
Son: “I think you’re nuts for going.”
Me: “No way! I love U2”
Son: “He he”
Me: “Hey, you’re supposed to say, ‘I love you, too, Mom.'”
Son: “You did not just say that.”

After that, the traffic cleared and we were on our way. We found my husband at the car-wash he’s building. He moved the orange traffic cones and we backed into this private, no-pay parking lot. We were so pleased with ourselves for getting free parking; not so much twenty minutes later when we were still hiking though the picturesque residential area on our way to Scott Stadium. At this point, we girls were truly grateful for easy walking shoes.

Concert-going Tip # 1 : Even if your kids are vegan, do not try to bring food into the Stadium, they will make you throw it out. Unless the one checking your bag happens to be a man, and he, apparently, likes your eye make-up, then you will be allowed to bring in a big bar of chocolate, some lollipops, two kinds of breath mints, half a fruit leather, and chewing gum. My girls wondered how I did it. If I had a clue, I would tell them.

Concert going Tip # 2: If you can, get them to book three of your seats inside a concrete block. We spent ten minutes with the help of two ushers looking for seats PP 9, 10, 11, and 12. We did find 12, but the other three disappeared into solid concrete. We were pretty sure no one could sit inside a concrete block and the ushers did, eventually, agree with us. We traipsed half-way around the Stadium. Beside me, my middle daughter was sputtering under her breath, fuming,

“If our new seats aren’t better, I’m going to go off!” she said.

She is her father’s daughter; I fear for the person standing at the receiving end of her eventual ire. My eldest daughter and I followed in the wake of the fuming two, feeling completely assured that something eventful was likely to happen. We came to a window where a woman was waiting. I’m sure this woman was hired simply for her peaceful, easy expression and her uncharacteristic beauty. It’s hard to be properly irate when someone looks like that. We needn’t have worried. She reassigned our seats.

“Are they better?” my husband asked.
“Oh, yes,” she smiled, a bright sun breaking through clouds, ” they are much better.”

We sat three rows from the edge of the stadium wall, close enough that Bono and the rest of the band looked like actual people, instead of dancing, singing miniatures of the real thing. Better seats, for sure.

Concert going Tip # 3: The people in front of you can hear every single word of your conversation, so it might not be the best place in the world to tell a graffic story of your vasectomy gone wrong. Whoever you were, I, too, am glad you made it out of there intact.

Sitting three seats from the edge, we were still not in the best seats in the house. The stage wrapped around all sides and the performers did walk down to our end a few times during the course of the show. It didn’t matter. It was loud, and they were LIVE! I jumped, I danced, I screamed with my girls. I felt the drum-beat echoing in the hollow of my chest, that airy cavity made by my lungs. I felt the cells in my bones bend to the music, my heart lilt with the beat. Around me, 54, 999 other people were feeling the same.

With a twenty-minute walk ahead of us, we left before the encore. We stood up to go, the crowd surged to their feet and lit up like the Vermont night sky in the blues, reds, and yellows of a perfect miniature milky-way made by their cell-phones. My comrades stayed behind and heard the last beat of the drum, the fading ring of the guitar. I drove home through a long and rolling night, perfectly content.

“It’s all right, its all right, it’s all right, she moves in mysterious ways….”

Getting the Hay In (written May 20th)

It’s that bright kind of sunny day where you squint even in the shade and the entire country-side looks dipped in light. The blue sky harbors lazy white clouds and the bushy green trees harbor warbling birds. They never give me any advance warning, but there’s something in the air on a hay-day (maybe that fresh-cut hay smell) that let’s me know haying is just a phone-call away.

This time we’re shooting to get 150 bales to feed our livestock of two: one fat young painted Saddlebred, and one bony old Thoroughbred. Mostly, they’re pasture-pals, friends I can go to whenever I need a listening ear. I can depend on them to stand quietly while I complain and never argue or tell me the situation is my own fault. They’re just there, quietly crunching, swishing tails at the flies while the warmth of their hides permeates the air. I can lean back against that solid, living mass, and let all my problems slide away.

I can’t haul hay, anymore. After years of gloving up and tossing 60 pound bales onto trucks–as quick and tough as any of the men–now, my allergies won’t let me. I always did come away from a haying session pocked-marked with raised red welts on my arms, and a voice grown hoarse and (I thought) sexy from coughing. Really, it was hives from my allergic reaction to those lovely Northern Grasses. I can’t haul it, but I can still drive and fortunately for me, I managed to birth a strong, healthy, wonderfully helpful young man who came with me to hay today.

We drove to the field on dry, dusty roads, past where they were laying another field down. That deep green blanket would fade in the sun and be ready to tedder tomorrow, ready to bale the next day. Farther on, we wove past cows, stomping lazily in a lean-to, up over a knoll to where the hay field stretched out. Long rows were piled neat and the baler was churning away, rumbling and plunking as square bales popped out the back. They had three lines baled already, about fifty ready to haul. But, this was my son’s first go at driving a hay-laden truck; I wasn’t willing to push it. We’d load thirty-five bales, forty tops.

I drove down the lanes, he ran along beside me, as graceful as a gazelle, despite the fifteen pounds of muscle he has recently packed on through his weight-training sessions—pounds he’d be thanking God he’d worked hard to earn by the end of today. He loped along bare-foot because he’d been wearing sandals when we’d gotten the call. He had gloves in his truck, so at least his hands were safe. His feet, it seemed, would have to fend for themselves. He was faster than I had ever been and moved in smooth motion. He caught each bale, lifted it as I chugged slowly up in my diesel F350. Then, in one easy movement I could never have mastered, he tossed them into the truck bed. In moments like these you realize you have been kidding yourself; I never could load hay like any man, that was a dream born from a wanna-be.

I find I’m still a wanna-be. Only the strong memory of struggling for each asthmatic breath keeps me locked in the cab with the air-conditioner blowing. It’s hard to give up something you love so that you can stay alive and breathing. But, even without the exhausted, itching, back-rending, muscle defeating, exhilarating effort of actually loading the hay–I still love it.

He looks hot as he pulls off his T-shirt, climbs into the driver’s side of my truck, pops in his ears buds, cranks his i-pod, and drives my away. He’ll be back in an hour or two, after he’s unloaded into the barn and I’ll head back out to the field as a driver, a blessed break from the office-job where I’ll be working late, waiting in comfort for him to deliver each load to home. We’ll do this four times, and by the end of the night, he’ll be worn to the bone, sweating and itching, and too tired to lift his fork to eat and I’ll envy him for his youth, his strength, his health that all give him this ability to load the hay.

More than that, I’ll be grateful. I’ll remember this day forever as I know he will. He’ll remember it as the time he loaded one hundred and sixty-two bales of hay from the truck to the barn all on his own. I’ll remember it as the first time ever I didn’t lift a single bale while getting the hay in.

The Sound of Snow

It snowed seven inches on Sunday night, surprising the heck out of me. We were going to the Zoo on Saturday. I had been watching the Saturday weather like an obsessed hawk all week–scanning the web-casts daily, trying to determine if a Zoo trip would be nuts from a purely weather standpoint.It was a little. 42 degrees and breezy, it wasn’t the best temperatures for gallavanting about, marveling at rare and unusual beasts. But, in my life, I have learned I had better strike while the iron’s hot–it cools off way too quickly when one thing, then another, then another comes along.

So, we went. I loved it, walked for miles, ended up foot-sore and bone-chilled by the end of the day. I got to see a shrew–which is the cutest little creature. I cannot understand it–where did the reference to an awful woman come from? Shrews are just as cute as cute can be. Call me a shrew and I’ll throw my arms around you and kiss you for the compliment.

We drove home through rain and mixed snow, but it had cleared away by morning and I was looking forward to my day. I had a chocolate cake date with my girlfriend, Grace. She makes a mean chocolate cake.

It was rumor when first I heard of it—“Rumor has it, we’re going to get 8-10 inches of snow.”

“Suuuurrreee, we are.” I knew better than to believe. I had suffered many dissappointments in our sunny, warm VA. Snow in March? Paaalease.

Four o’clock pm it started, large moist flakes, bits of shredded coconut, dropping onto the dark brown earth below, frosting the grass with the first hints of the whipped-cream topping that was to come. Oh, wait, now I’ve slipped into thinking about the cake, the chocolate one, the one I didn’t have because this other white stuff fell thick around, the one Grace and Clarke were forced to eat for me. Thanks for the sacrifice, guys. :>

Are you wondering? Did I go out in my snowfall? Did I do all those things I imagined I would? Not all, life just doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, when the moment comes, it is enough to watch your children making snow-angels–in their bathing-suits, I might add.

I did go for my walk, though. Some things I can’t resist. I had to hear that sound, be part of the falling silence. I stood in my driveway and looked up, let the flakes fall on my face, magic from the earth and sky consumed me, I closed my eyes and heard that longed-for sound of snow.

Photograph of snow in trees by Sam Van Dyke. For one time use for “lakshmibertram.com,” all rights retained by Sam Van Dyke.

It is SNOWING!!!!

Today, in balmy VA, I drove with my windows rolled down. 57 degrees, the sun was shining and all the world was whispering Spring. Late in the day, with dark clouds, wind, and thunder a brimming cold front made the temperature plummet.

Still, who has time to think of snow?

We had a lot of homework to be done, stories to read, dinner to be made. Each task completed, I thought, “Thank Goodness, one step closer to the warmth of my bed.” As the night worn on, my toes grew cold without their brightly colored socks. The kids drifted off, one by one. The house grew still and quiet. Downstairs I padded, turning off lights.

And then I saw it, a thin blanket of white on my yard. Snow. I peeked out the door, it was still falling, a soft tinkling whisper in the night. On my outstretched palm it fell like feathers of ice. One child was still wandering our halls,

“Look, it’s snowing” I whispered.

“Oh, snap!” She said.

We both know it could be gone by morning, with our Lady Virginia’s fickle weather patterns. But, right now, tonight, my world has turned white, and I will sleep like the land under that soft, feather blanket, my mind resting in the quiet joyful knowledge: It is snowing.

Photograph by Sam Van Dyke. For one time use for “lakshmibertram.com” , all rights retained by Sam Van Dyke.

Things That Go Bump in the Road

We were late. All four kids were rushed out of the house by two harried parents and into the Ford Expedition. My husband was driving. Our eighteen year old, a fourth member of our dance quarto, had gone ahead of us in his little Toyota. The other two dancers, our nine year old and I, were dressed in black skirts and stockings, ready to skip to the Irish reel and jig. We had been practising for 10 weeks and this was to be one of my daughter’s first performances.

Life does not always go as planned.

Our twelve year old daughter had left her purse at a cousin’s house so we had to make an extra stop on the way. It had snowed the night before, sugar dusting all of Virginia with less than an inch of fluffy, white powder. By the time we were on the road, just after noon on Sunday, it was nearly forty degrees and a bright, clear sunny day.

No remnants of the first winter snowfall remained on the road as we drove to the top of the hill.

Getting the purse had added pressure. We were only minutes behind schedule, but that was enough for us to be going at a steady clip heading down the long hill. Not speeding—it’s impossible to exceed the limit on those winding roads—but moving along quite nicely in an attempt to make it to the recital on time, just cruising on a Sunday on a road we knew well and had driven over a thousand times in twenty-five years in all kinds of weather.

The eldest had their i-pod on and was reading, settling in for the hour-long drive. The two little ones were laughing and messing around with each other. The middle daughter was sorting through the recently retrieved purse and I was inhaling my salad in the front seat, trying to fuel-up for our dance performance.

Life; busy and hectic as usual. No sense of foreboding, no brilliant flash of insight, my only thought when I saw the ice on the road was for my son, driving ten minutes ahead of us. We were in a four-wheel drive, he was just in that little Toyota.

My husband swore as we hit the front edge of the first ice patch and reached down to make sure we were in all-wheel drive. We were, but it wouldn’t do us any good.

We hit the second patch and he knew we were in trouble. He turned into the skid as we began to slide. I imagine we were going about 40 miles per hour but we hit the ice on a steep down-slope and picked up speed as we careened off the right hand side of the road, dropped into a ditch and headed straight for a set of mail-boxes.

I thought, “We’re going to hit those mailboxes.” And I remember the feeling of horror and dismay, knowing we were going to have an accident and no way to prevent it.

That was the moment everything went hay-wire.

We only clipped the mail boxes. Our trajectory changed. I closed my eyes just before we slammed into the boxes—I’m a horrid chicken at times like this—when I opened them, we were airborne. We had careened at high speed back across the road, hit a culvert, where a pipe went under the driveway, and sailed over the gravel lane. We hit railroad ties lining the drive on the other side and sent one flying thirty-feet into a field. We crashed landed through a fence, plowed straight over a wooden post that bent like a toothpick. It didn’t slow the truck at all. Ahead, in the field, we could see the tree coming. Eyes wide open, this time, I watched as we barrelled towards it. There was no way to avoid that tree, no time to think, or even react before we hit. I could see doom looming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The impact came with a force I was not familiar with, not from falling off a dozen different horses. It started in my low back and ricocheted all up my spine. My head flung forward and my chin hit my chest. I know now why they call it whiplash. My husband and daughter in the driver’s side both screamed in pain. We had stopped, but to what? He shouted, “Don’t anybody move! Stay exactly still!” Immediately, I turned to look at the kids, feeling the strange looseness in my neck and back. They were all staring back at me, eyes wide with shock and pain. All of them awake, alive. Two started crying.

I knew we were supposed to stay put, I had had my CPR training, but I looked back to the front and saw the mangled hood of the truck. My husband was shouting for a cell-phone. There were four in the truck, somewhere. I began frantically looking for mine. It had been charging in my cup-holder but I couldn’t find it. I traced the cord and pulled it from the floor, handed it to my husband. I looked back up at the crumpled front end.

“We’re getting out of here.” I said.

I don’t know what makes a vehicle explode, but I was not willing to wait and see if ours would. I got out, moving with difficulty and had the kids get out, looking them over as they left. Our little boy was bleeding on his lips. I took the edge of his shirt to wipe the blood. Slowly, we climbed the hill and the kids sat on the remaining rail-road tie. By then, my husband had stopped someone on the road who actually had a cell-signal—my phone didn’t—and they called the rescue squad. He also called my sister, an RN.

I looked down at my kids, all crying and shivering in the brisk wind. I took off my coat and wrapped it around the nine year old, wrapped my scarf around the twelve year old. My husband came over and looked at me. We knew how lucky we were,

“It’s good they’re all crying.” He said, “It means they’re all alive.”

“My feet are cold.” My littlest one said. I looked down, he was missing a shoe.

“Mine, too.” The nine year old was missing both of hers.

I noticed my feet were also cold, both of my shoes were gone as well. Where were our shoes? I hobbled back down to the car and found them. I didn’t know you could hit something so hard it would knock your shoes off. One of mine was jammed up under the dashboard where the impact had driven part of the engine into the car. It was a while later that I realized my shin was bleeding and I had a bone-bruise as a result of the engine’s movement.

The EMT’s arrived and put collars on the older four of us and hauled us off in two ambulances on back-boards. The littlest two children seemed to have escaped nearly unscathed, and went home with my RN sister, to be checked out later by our Family doctor.

In the end, we have five cases of whiplash with a lot of pain and stiffness during any kind of movement. My husband was the most gravely hurt with a herniated disc in his lower spine as well as a small laceration to his scalp.

This week, for me, has been a dazed blur, partly due to the combination of pain-killers and muscle relaxers they prescribed for me, mainly due to a kind of numb gratitude. I didn’t know I could feel so grateful. I feel as if I am living in a dream-world, or walking on a cloud. Just the sound of their voices and the sight of my husband and children fills me with an intense, stunned love.

I don’t know why we were so lucky, why all of us were spared. It isn’t easy to total an Expedition. The tree was twelve inches in diameter. We hit with such force, we uprooted it, yet, in essence, we all walked away. I know one day, my name will be called and I will leave this earth to join my maker. I know one day, we will all be called. “Why not now?” is a question that has no answer, yet I can’t help asking.

In the end, I suppose, it just wasn’t our time.

(Photo by Nataraja Bertram)

Over the Hills and Far Away

When I was a we’en, I ran like the wind, liking nothing better than the feel of my heart pounding, the rushing of blood through my veins. Through the forests and over the hills, gulping leaf and moss scented air–this alive–I reverted to the wild in me, to the voice that whispered the same soft rustling as the sun-tipped leaves. I drank the air and light and sound of this un-human world, sustenance and protection against the mundane life that I awoke to every morning.

This is how I survived my childhood and the pains I couldn’t bear. I ran them away, over hill and dale, letting the gasping of the effort blow them away.

But, we grow old and we grow slow and we no longer hear the wind that calls our name. Responsibility makes its weighty appearance. Age stomps in and demands decorum. We buckle and fold and forget the sunshine days.

Or do we?

Somewhere deep inside of me, on quiet nights, I can hear her wild howling–my wild miss–lurking in me still behind my many faces. Yesterday, like any other day, I drove the winding road home from work. The breeze snuck in my window and settled just under the edge of my skin. I put on workout clothes and stomped to the basement to lift weights. There was no room in the basement, a project had all the items from one locale leaking over into my exercise space. I dragged back up the stairs, longing for the rush of blood.

The door burst open and the wind blew in, “Run with me,” she said.

“I’m going for a walk,” I announced and of course they wanted to come.

Two tall lassie’s and two fine lads. We dressed in shorts and tank-tops, laced our shoes, and out we went…walking.

I didn’t know then that the wild in me had been born in my brood, but the hills knew their names, and called to their swift feet, away they went, galloping, a herd of two-footers and I forged after them. We dodged the trees and leapt over rocks and fallen logs. They laughed like clear water and bobbed through the rippled light, fairy-beacons, frolicking, guiding me on the path back to myself.

And the wild one laughed and is laughing still.