RUNNING
Into the morning light
I run
Searching for the
rising sun
Looking for a place of
peace
Waiting for the pain to
cease.
However far and fast I
speed
I cannot quench my
fearful need.
I run until the sun is
high;
If I stop, I fear I’ll
die.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
JUNE
25, 2000. 9 AM.
Despite the fact that I have been
out of school for two weeks now, I am still dreaming of my classroom and waking
up tense and tired. Last night alone I taught Geometry to a group of
eight-graders, English to my sixth-grade home room, and Science to a bunch of
toads who had hopped into my room from the lake down the road. Despite their
jumpiness, the toads were by far the most attentive audience, having a true
interest in biology and a vested stake in animal rights.
What would a dream interpreter make
of my nighttime pedagogy? A fear of eighth-graders? A secret desire to become a
zoologist? Or a teacher who has found herself completely fried by a long year
at a new school compounded by her husband’s car accident and long
hospitalization?
I have determined this summer to
relax, but I attach it with the same ferocity I attack everything, laying up
books I want to read and sketching out stories I want to write. Ron is doing
well now. Probably better than I am since he has had four months of sitting
still. I, on the other hand, am a whirlwind of motion. I have a list posted on
the refrigerator of summer projects and another written in my journal of all
the new things I have tackled this year. They both exhaust me. In the last ten
months I have learned to:
- Teach
four different subjects to four different sections of students
- Work
through the atmosphere and pace of Westtown
- Head
up student council
- Drive
in the dark
- Install
light fixtures
- Fix
leaky pipes and water heaters
- Learn
to speak “Quaker”
- Change
the oil in my car
- Stretch
my paycheck
- Use
paper plates for meals
- Take
care of a cat
- Start
the lawn mower (that one was tricky!)
- Pace
hospital waiting rooms
- Come
to a working knowledge of the spleen and the pancreas
- Deal
with lawyers
- Fill
out medical forms
The list goes on and on. What I have
not learned is that the world can probably manage to limp along without me. At
the moment, it seems that I am still needed everywhere. I do not know how to
just lay it all down and walk away.
JUNE
30, 2000. 7PM.
Today, Ron drove for the first time
in over twenty weeks, maneuvering my ancient Celebrity down Naaman’s Creek Road
and into a parking lot at Target where we purchased a 26 inch tube for Allen’s
bike tire. A momentous journey. I sat in the unaccustomed passenger seat, an
almost unwilling accomplice to my husband’s maiden voyage.
I sat with my hands in my lap, my
feet firmly planted on the floor, my stomach in knots, and my eyes darting
everywhere. Front window. Rear window. Side window. Ron’s face. Dr. Huffman had
said to be prepared for a panic attack during the first drive. I was prepared,
ready to offer reassurance, ready to grab the wheel, ready to dial 911 on my
cell phone. I willed the trucks to stop at all the red lights, focused all my
energy on keeping the car centered in the middle of the lane by my amazing kinetic powers. Due to my superior concentration alone, we made it to
Target in one piece. Ron got out of the car—he still moves slowly—tossed me the
keys, and sauntered into the store. I took a moment to breathe a prayer of
thanks for journey’s mercies and followed him, grateful for the cold blast of
air-conditioning the struck me at the door, cooling my fevered brow.
Our errand took only a few short
minutes but my erratic heartbeat returned to normal. We made our purchase,
exited the store, and approached my car. I was breathing normally again.
Two steps to go. I approached the
driver’s side.
“I’ll drive,” said Ron, sidling
neatly in front of me.
Dr. Huffman had warned us about
panic attacks. She hadn’t said they would be mine.
JULY
4, 2000. 9 PM.
June has too quickly given way to July
and now we find it to be Independence Day. Or, as my grandmother called it,
Declaration Day. In my carefree childhood, these holidays were always spent on
the sands of Rehoboth Beach, cavorting with my cousins and my brother in the
ocean’s surf, cooking hot dogs and hamburger’s on Nanny’s back porch and
playing horseshoes in front of Uncle Fred’s cabin. Homemade ice-cream was the
highlight, using Nanny’s ancient wood freezer. We would take turns during the
hot July day sitting on its lid to hold it down while someone else cranked.
Most of my memories of the Fourth of
July are happy ones. Some are not. Nanny died one sad Fourth. Last year, Ron
was at Friends’ and the kids and I went to Marsh Creek for the day rather than
face an empty house and a hollow celebration. Still, July Fourth makes me think
of the beach and ocean breezes and silver sparklers.
Today, we are barbecuing chicken and
packing to go away to Rehoboth tomorrow, avoiding the worst part of the holiday
rush. I expect to do most of the driving. We will spend five days laying on the
beaches of my childhood and visiting with my parents. It will be good to get
away and feel the soft, warm sand between my toes, to let the summer sun wash
some of the winter pallor from my face.
Winter has been exceedingly long.
Just when the last snows had melted away and spring seemed a certain promise,
our lives were changed by the driver of a pick-up truck on Paoli Pike. Spring
became a long marathon of endurance through the valley of shadows. Most days
there was little light.
But now the brilliant colors of
summer have replaced the beige tones of the hospital corridors. Blue skies,
turquoise oceans, and the soaring majesty of fireworks are causes for
rejoicing.
I tell myself this as I sit on the
back deck with Ron, watching the display shot off at Hewes Avenue Park. The
kids have ventured up into the crowds with friends, but I have preferred to sit
here with my husband, exclaiming over the high ones. We hear the faint sounds
of the explosions, then see a burst of color, silver and blue and gold lighting
up the night. Slowly, the flickers of light fall back to earth like tired
fireflies. Ron takes my hand in his and gives it a squeeze. His grip is not yet
very strong. I squeeze back, just a little.
It is true that summer is here and,
from all appearances, things seem to be going well. But in my heart I am
truthful: I have not yet shaken the winter from my soul.
JULY
11, 2000. 7 AM.
It is Bonnie’s second day at her new
job and I get out of bed when she does, wanting to share this golden morning
with my daughter. We have shared many that began with far less hope. I have
coffee and fresh bagels ready when she comes downstairs. She is so beautiful,
this chubby baby who struggled to breathe when she was born six weeks early.
Her unscheduled arrival surprised me then, but in the last two years she has
surprised me in other ways as well. Her hair is red—this week, anyway—her eyes
a sky blue, and her face dotted with freckles she pretends to hate. We are
similar in many ways. We share a face, a walk, a voice. Like me, she wants to
be a teacher and loves to write stories and thinks in terms of metaphors and
similes. She laughs a lot, in my timber, and my dimples play around the corners
of her mouth.
Unlike me, she is messy, forgetful,
and doesn’t always apply herself to her schoolwork and can carry a tune without
the prerequisite bucket I would need. Her voice—my voice—trills over high notes
and octaves I can only dream of. She sings the way I would if I could.
But I cannot.
“It’s just about the only thing you
don’t do well,” she will often say to me. She has been my champion for years,
her belief in me unshakable. She and her younger brother firmly believe that I
can save the world. It is sometimes exhausting to live up to.
She is twenty-one—just—but looks
seventeen, a gift from my gene pool. It is a gift she does not really
appreciate right now but will when she reaches her forties. In many ways, she
seems younger than her age. I have always attributed it to her early and
difficult birth, but this young woman before me bears no scars from it. She is
5’7” and tops me by an inch. She sings and dances through life seemingly
without a care in the world.
But I have spent countless hours
with this dream child. Despite her fragile appearance, she is tough. We clung
to each other the night of Ron’s accident, waiting out the long hours together.
We have clung to each other since then, propping one another up. She has filled
in the gaps when my own strength has badly sagged. Last year, when Ron’s issues
with bi-polar disorder brought him to Friends’ Hospital, it was she who helped
me make the decision to leave The Christian Academy for Westtown, she who helped
me pack up my classroom and install light fixtures in the bathroom and take the
car to have the oil changed.
Allen sometimes complains that he
has two mothers. It is almost true. It has not, as far as I can see, hurt
either of them.
So we sit this morning, sharing
coffee and bagels and conversation. She loves her small charges at the daycare
center and plans for the time when she will have her own classroom. It is good
to be looking forward with her. She is, like me, a survivor.
Our minister’s wife told me last
week that I have been an excellent example to my daughter of what a Christian
wife should be. I pray that it is true. Between Ron’s accident and mental
issues, there has been a lot to endure. I have not always known if I have made
the right decisions. Despite it all, we have survived.
Looking at her bright face this morning,
listening to her happy chatter, I realize that we have done more than survive.
We have, as the Bible says, come through the fire. That which is gold and
silver has become brighter for the refining, as bright as her cheery face.
I watch her leave this morning, my
daughter, my right arm, my confidante, knowing that whatever else may transpire
in her life, she is silver.
She will shine.
July
12, 2000. 2PM.
There should be scars here. Or the
markings of skidding tires across the road. Or, at the very least, a remnant of
twisted, distorted metal, something to mark the intersection of Five Points
Road and Paoli Pike where the truck crashed into Ron’s Taurus. The Taurus, poor
thing, did not survive. Ron did, albeit with injuries that would have felled a lesser
man and which will haunt him for years to come. Today, miracle of miracles, he
is driving his new Caravan past the very spot where, four months ago, he became
the non-person referred to in accident reports and court litigation as “the
victim.” It has been a long road. We have almost recovered. This dry run up to
Ron’s plant today is in preparation for his return to work next week, where he
will once again become a man who earns a paycheck, carries a wallet, and jingles
car keys in his pocket. Ron’s scars are numerous. They will, in time, heal. But
it seems impossible to me that the road where our lives took such a drastic
turn is unchanged.
It must be, then, the only thing
that has remained exactly the same, bearing no imprint of March 1. Paoli Pike, I
note, has learned no lessons. Trucks still speed as if all humanity depended
upon their prompt arrival. It is hard for me to pass this spot. My stomach
twists into knots. My husband’s blood was spilled her, but people are passing
by as if nothing untoward ever took place at this intersection, going on with
their lives unaware. Maybe that is the greatest tragedy.
We all bear scars. Ron’s are
visible. The accident left none of us unscathed. I am glad. Those of us who
lived this nightmare, who lurked in the corners of hospitals, who prayed and
wept and questioned God’s wisdom, have learned from this. We treasure each day.
We treasure each other. We walk a little slower. We breathe more deeply. We
live each day with more compassion and faith, never knowing what the next turn
in the road may bring.
And I wonder, as we drive past this
spot where Ron’s body was so badly damaged, at the people who pass by here blithely. Perhaps they are the same ones who pass the Cross of Calvary, unaware
of the blood shed there and the eternal life its shedding offers. They move
past it daily. Maybe they acknowledge it as history, nothing more. Their lack
of understanding does not change the lesson or the gift.
So Paoli Pike remains as it was
before the accident.
But we do not. It will haunt me forever.
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