It was end of the summer and school was to start in less then a week. My parents wanted to allow my brothers and I to have one last day of fun. Fun for us was spending a day at Whalom Park in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, an old, dying, rusty, bug infested, weeds coming through the cement amusement park.

I was young. Five. Six. Could have been seven. I was young and couldn’t wait to be a big kid like my brothers.

They got to ride on the gigantic, white, rickety, creaking wooden roller coaster with my father while I had to be satisfied with riding the brightly colored, music blaring, smelly, mysteriously damp seated merry-go-round with my mother. She would tell me how much more fun we were having than my brothers, but I didn’t believe her. I wanted to be 48” inches so I could finally live.

My mother didn’t like fast rides. Riding on the train and the wooden horses was her idea of fun. Occasionally, she would let me ride the fast rides with my brothers and father and wave at us when she looked up from her mystery novel.

On this breezy, mosquito biting, hands smelling of a mixture of hot dogs and metal day during the last week of August in 1990, my mother said she would be my co-pilot on the “Rockets” ride. I was thrilled and when the ride operator opened the creaky gate, I ran, giggling, towards a round, rusty silver saucer and hopped in.

As the ride operator, who resembled a teenage Pugsley Adams, went around making sure our fraying Velcro seat belts were fastened, my mother scurried over to join me.

“Hands inside the ride at all times. No standing. No spitting. Have fun!” He robotically yelled hitting the switch as my mother was getting in. The ride started to ascend and slowly spin and she let out a scream that haunted my dreams for years after.

I saw my mother starting to fall backwards towards the cracked cement. I pictured her lying on the ground, her head split open, blood gushing from it, her breathing stopped. I pictured a life without her and my brothers forever blaming me for letting her die. I had to save her.

“Mama, I’ve got you!” I yelled as I tore open my seat belt, grabbed her hands, and with the legendary strength that only mothers trying to save their children are supposed to possess, I tugged my mother into the ship and she fell onto the sticky gray floor with a thud and a groan.

Though I was only 47″ inches, for that day, I was larger than Superman and The Incredible Hulk combined.