July 24, 2009
A More Than Fair Trade
Today as I was walking to my car after a brief trip to the grocery store I noticed a pretty teenage girl in a nearby car with her Mother. What immediately caught my eye was the shape of her eyes and her long blond-brown hair. Then in the next instant I realized why she seemed so familiar to me. She strongly resembled one of my Daughter’s close friends from her high school days. A teenager that I had come to love as one of mine.
Ah yes, those turbulent teen age years. So wonderful yet so awful at the same time. These two were as close as sisters and the two girls spent a lot of time together at one home or the other. During their college years, they would get together during semester breaks and hang out together.
Over one such vacation period, they were out and about in my Daughter’s four door car. It was the model that her Father had insisted she have because it was strong and safe. The girls were to be home by the agreed upon curfew time. Iva Lou lived out in the country, but there was a busy and weird intersection near her parents home. One which was slated to be completely redesigned over the next few years with an overpass .
As I unlocked the front door of the house after my date, I could hear my answering machine “talking” and then I could tell that someone was leaving a message. I just couldn’t get the front door opened fast enough to pick up the call! Purse and keys still in hand I immediately walked to retrieve the message. It was my Daughter’s voice. They had been in an accident at that intersection — I kept walking - purse and keys still in hand- out to the garage, calmly got into my car and drove as safely fast as I could to the wide intersection. It was less than 5 minutes away.
There is a slight rise to this street before you come to the wide (four lane) intersection so you sort of approach it by coming up over a little hill. As I crested the slight rise I started seeing an amazing array of flashing red lights. There were more flashing red lights than I had ever seen at one accident in my life. They crossed the entire width of the huge intersection. And my Daughter and Iva were there somewhere!
There was a policeman directing traffic which was down to one lane. I pull my little four door compact car over to the far right shoulder and get out. I don’t even know if I locked the doors or even took the keys with me. I yell to him that that is my daughter and he gives me permission to cross the lanes of traffic and approach her car which is surrounded by firetrucks, police cars, and firemen with the jaws of life. Her little sturdy vehicle is facing the wrong direction with the back tires up on the wide median which is perpendicular to the direction of the car. I can’t comprehend what I am looking at. Glass, broken head lights, broken tail lights and bits of crushed fragmented metal as well as car fluids litter the highway near her car but I don’t see the girls right away. I am searching for her in the darkness.
I am trying to make sense of this crash scene which has caused three firetrucks and three ambulances and numerous police cars to be present. All of them have their red lights flashing. My mind is struggling to keep in control and think straight. Where is she? She has to be alright because she is the one who left me the voice message. I make it to her car. I call out her name. I call out both girls names. She is surrounded by firemen with neck braces and backboards. I go to the car window nearest to me– the passenger side. It is not her –it is Iva Lou. The impact of the crash pinned Iva in the car but she is conscious and not bleeding and not in any immediate danger. She is scared, but not in any dire medical danger and well covered by the emergency crews who are working to safely extricate her. I resume my search for my Daughter.
My Daughter is not anywhere to be seen. I start to panic because I can’t find her, forgetting that she left me a coherent message, I am thinking that now I must go looking for her in the various ambulances. I go around to the drivers side of the car where the door is wide open. Did she fall out? Not her….this is the child of mine that ALWAYS put her seat belt on even as a little girl. I instinctively know she was buckled in. As I look around and try to decide where to go first, someone is talking to me. There is a police car right there and it is the policeman who is talking to me. I tell him I am looking for my daughter. He asks me if the young woman next to him in the front seat is her. It is! She is sitting in the front seat of the police car giving her statement. I am so relieved to see her. Hugs and words of encouragement and amazement are exchanged. She assures me now that she is OK and not hurt. I wonder how that can be when I look again at the car.
I then turn my attention to Iva Lou. She is still in the car. The emergency crews are working to free her. It seems that the impact jammed all of the doors shut except the drivers door. The hood is jammed as well as the trunk. The car will be totaled by the insurance company; it has had it’s last drive. It died saving the lives of two precious, precocious girls. A more than fair trade. The Mother’s Nightmare has been avoided. I try to encourage and comfort Iva while staying out of the way. I tell her that she will be OK. And she is.
A driver unfamiliar with the area had hit them while they were making a left turn with the green arrow — a dedicated left turn is what that is called. The other driver is at fault. That matters not at this point. I want to tell you about the sturdy little four door car that saved their lives.
While my daughter was making a legal left turn, the other driver apparently sped up to “beat the light” through the unfamiliar intersection. He and his wife had been at a wedding reception all afternoon and evening. It is an extra wide intersection and his light changed to red before he got to the intersection, but he kept going. This meant that the girls had the dedicated green left turn light, and were in the process of making the turn when he came plowing into the intersection. Going faster than he should have been going, he hit their car at the strongest point in their vehicle.
His car hit them on the passenger side between the front and back doors where there is an extra bar of steel. This impact point is what saved them from major injuries. This vehicle has an extra bar of steel from the roof to the chassis between the front and back doors. It also has another steel bar that runs from one side to the other side welded to the chassis. His front end pushed into the strong little compact four door about two to three feet. More than 15 years later, I can still see (in my mind) the cave-like “dent” his car made. The force of the accident pushed the passenger seat in which Iva Lou was sitting into the console which pushed against my Daughter’s drivers seat all of which were compressed in the process. This is why Iva Lou couldn’t get out by herself. Her seat, the passenger seat, was compressed to about 1/2 it’s normal size and jammed up against the center console which jammed up against the driver’s seat.
Neither girl is hospitalized and the bond of their friendship is closer because of the common experience thay have just shared.
And so it is not unreasonable that I would immediately recognize someone who strongly resembled Iva Lou those many years ago. Of course Iva Lou now a beautiful woman, doesn’t look like that now, but that was the way I remember her the most.
