After this experience in the anals of life, parenting and love, I’ve changed my mind, outlook and modus operendi. As I stood over his emergency room bed, looking down at him, his normally neat khakis and blue polo shirt were wet and wrinkled, leaves were stuck in his wavy black hair and more than a few nics, scrapes and bruises dotted his handsome face, arms and hands, but overall, he was fine. My son told me he was in an accident and was thrown from his friend’s car while it spun out of control in the middle of a rainy stretch of busy highway, and flipped over five times before coming to rest upside-down. He said he remembered flying through the air after the force of spinning slipped him out from under his fastened seat-belt. He said he had just yelled, “Slow down!” to his young friend who was driving, when the car jerked forward and started the spin.  He told me he’d said 15 prayers calling for God’s help as he flew helplessly through the air landing on his knees in a ditch  filled with water, that cushioned his landing. The emergency room doctor couldn’t believe he was so uninjured.

      He was in good spirits and I knew he was a better man than before it happened.  I had been packing to catch a flight back to Texas for my job when the call came in. Dashing to get my husband who was anxiously waiting at work, all the officer had said was that our son was in a serious car accident and they were taking him to the hospital.  Strangely the call had not affected me the way I thought it would. I seemed to know he would be OK. It was good one of us was calm enough to drive, my husband Berl was weeping.

    Bobby had been working at the new job for six months and he loved it. He’d  found it on his own and was working for a promotion with the trendy store. The down side was that it was a 45 minute commute over a dangerous stretch of highway. When he first got the job it was only  two weeks after he had gotten his drivers license and his dad had found him an older model car. It was clean and dependable. He was excited.  But I didn’t care. He was not going to drive that car to work until I had a talk with him about that stretch of road where I had almost bit the dust myself 19 years before.  I made him take my narrated tour, pointing out tricky places in the highway. Showing him where  I had tried to pass another car and then ran out of control and wound up flying off the road into a pine tree.  He endured the drive but was not happy about it at all. “Mom, I know how to drive he grumbled. I’m not a bad driver.”  I explained: “Son I know you’re a safe driver but not an experienced one and this road is very dangerous. I just want you to have the advantage of my knowledge and experience so you’ll be prepared a little more.”