It’s hard to believe we are on the 71st day of quarantine. Every morning, I wake up to the same routine: coffee, walk 2 miles, more coffee, journal, more coffee, shower, get dressed, and if it’s a work day, fire up the computer and get to it. I leave the house on Saturdays, mask donned, to go grocery shopping. This is the extent of my forays into the world. Occasionally, we go for long drives in the countryside and last weekend, we actually strolled around downtown Princeton, for what it was worth.
This past Sunday, my brother and I told our cousin a few stories, sparked by a memory of my last encounter with our maternal grandfather. The story begins when I visited my dear old Pop-Pop after my mother, his only daughter, died. I was 18 years old and a freshman in college. I had not seen Pop-Pop (or any of my mother’s family) since I was maybe 4 or 5, when my parents divorced. He was a mean, bitter old coot. He had been rendered an enemy of all things beautiful when his wife was killed in a car accident, an accident that I was involved in as a small child. First, the story of 18 year-old me, his only grand-daughter, and the bitter, old coot. My visit with my mother’s family went well enough. My aunt, uncle and cousins were extremely pleasant and welcoming. I’ll be honest, it was weird, though. Things went sideways when Pop-Pop decided to recant all that was wrong with my father, and his family. The bitter old man had nothing nice to say about “the Sullivans.” After about an hour of this, I looked him in the eye, and said, “You know, Pop-Pop, I am your only granddaughter. And I am a Sullivan.” I thanked my aunt for her hospitality, gathered my things, and left. I never looked back. In relating this story to my brother and my cousin, I remembered standing a little taller that day as I took my name out the door with me.
The other story was the story of the accident. I could not have been more than 4. I remember only a few things but I remember them clearly. Just before a semi truck decided to jump a drawbridge and land on top of our little VW, I remember asking my grandfather (the same aforementioned Pop-Pop) if the red light just above us was going to hit us. He laughed his grandpa laugh, told me not to worry; it was only a traffic light, and to go back to sleep. I obliged and curled up on the back seat.
My next memory is of the emergency room. The lights were blindingly bright and I could hear my grandfather moaning about his leg. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him. I kept asking the nurse for my grandmother. She evaded me and kept asking me if I wanted anything. I remember I felt nauseous and she brought me a Coca-Cola to settle my stomach. I promptly vomited it all over the nurse. I remember nothing else of that night.
As the story was told to me, the State Troopers who were at the scene stayed at the hospital until my father arrived to collect me. They told my dad that it was nothing short of a miracle that I was unharmed – the entire passenger side of the car was demolished and my grandmother was killed instantly. My grandfather’s right leg was pulverized and would have to be rebuilt – that resulted in that leg being a few inches shorter than his left and a pronounced limp would plague him for the rest of his life – and I had a small cut on my right thumb. I had rolled off the back seat into an air pocket that formed when the car buckled. When they arrived at the scene, they could hear a child crying and imagined the worst. To extricate me from the wreckage, intact and unharmed, was beyond their comprehension. To them, it was a miracle.
We all agreed that there was definitely a guardian angel saving my life for some purpose. I can only hope that I haven’t squandered it.