For two days after the accident, the only people who knew what had happened were my husband and children. Then, because I could not face making multiple phone calls, I sent an email to my family and a few close friends. Here is part of the text of that email:

First: I am fine.

Second: I was involved in a car accident Friday night.

Third: I hate giving you this news via email, but I didn’t feel like making multiple phone calls to discuss something that the longer I think about, the more upset and angrier I get.

I was on my way home Friday evening, when another driver ran a red light and hit my van so hard that it flipped over, spun, and slid across an intersection until it hit a curb and stopped dead. The air bag deployed. My seat belt held (thank God I was wearing it). I was alone in the car (another thank God). My hands are shaking as I write this.

I did not see the car coming. It happened so fast and was very violent, but I did not lose consciousness and was aware of details such as the airbag deflating (poof, with a trail of dust in the air) and could see the outside world racing toward me as my car slid, upside down, diagonally across the road. I heard a scream. When the car stopped, everything was silent for a moment and then someone yelled, “Call 911.”

I had a sudden thought that maybe the car would burst into flames and then what would I do? I tried to release the seat belt but it held fast.

People appeared at my car, asking if I was alive, what my name was, how badly was I hurt? I was hanging upside down, inches from the dashboard. Most of the van’s windows had blown out, and someone crawled in through the passenger side window and released my seat belt. People helped me out through the driver’s side window. I hope I thanked them. I can’t remember.

I was able to stand and walk to the curb and sit down, where a passer-by, who said he used to be an EMT, sat with me and told me not to move my head or neck. The police arrived, then an ambulance. The EMTs fastened a collar around my neck and placed me on a hard board. They cut my shirt (but asked nicely first if I was very attached to it). They talked to me and told me to try to take deep breaths as I was hyperventilating. The police retrieved my purse and some belongings from the van.

The police, the EMTs — everyone was so wonderful. The staff at the hospital couldn’t have been nicer. I was there for several hours. I had a cat scan and x-rays (head, back, neck, shoulder). I was told that I might have some neck-muscle spasms and that I would feel worse before I would feel better. My left shoulder hurt and the fingers in my left hand were tingly as if they were falling asleep. The doctor said I might have a pinched nerve from the seat belt. I had a slight headache and my neck and back were stiff.

At some point, while I was waiting to be taken for x-rays, a police officer came into the room and went over the details of the accident with me. He said the other driver admitted to “being distracted” by his phone.

I know: I’m alive and that’s the only thing that’s supposed to matter. But I want to be “made whole” to use a cliché — or as whole as possible. I want my car back — or if that’s not possible I want a car that will protect me in the event something like this happens to me again in the future. Because that car saved my life. The roof did not buckle despite the fact that van flipped over. The air bag deployed. The seat belt held fast. The driver’s side of the car did not crumple and bend. That car saved my life.

Today I have more bruising and stiffness than I did yesterday. My back, neck, and left shoulder are stiff. My head aches. My knees and arms have bruising that is tender. All of this is manageable with ibuprofen. I know how lucky I was. But I can’t help feeling so upset about the unfairness that has been thrust upon me and my family because of the careless actions of another person.

I don’t think the driver who caused the accident meant to hurt me or anyone else. I’m sure he was horrified and wracked with guilt over what he had done. The final police report showed that he had been speeding and talking on a hand-held cell phone when he ran the light. Running a red light may be against the law, but, in Pennsylvania, driving while talking on a cell phone, hand-held or hands-free, is not. The best I can hope for is that, in the future, when he’s driving he’ll keep his hands and his mind on his car and the road.

Two weeks ago, the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB) recommended a total ban on the use of cell phones while driving: no talking on your cell phone while holding it, no talking on your cell phone even if you have it connected to a hands-free speaker, no texting. This announcement upset a lot of people. God forbid you shouldn’t be allowed to chat on the phone while backing your car out of a parking space. God forbid you shouldn’t be allowed to chat on the phone while merging onto a highway at rush hour. God forbid you shouldn’t be allowed to chat on the phone while approaching a red light that you haven’t noticed is red.

What I would ask is this: if you have to engage in a phone conversation while driving, make it hands-free. And make it short, or pull off the road.

I wish I had a few neat, tidy sentences to tie up this post, but I don’t. I’m alive, I’m lucky, all I lost was a car which I’ve replaced. But it’s not that simple, because I’ve also lost — for lack of a better term — some peace of mind. My son takes the car out, and I worry that the same type of thing could happen to him. I see drivers with one hand on a steering wheel and the other holding a phone, and I want to flag them down and shout, “Are you crazy?” I approach an intersection with a green light and feel my stomach clench as I drive through. It’s been a month since the accident and talking about it can still make my head ache and bring me close to tears.

I know these feelings will pass. I also know that there is no phone conversation more important than the life of another person. Words to live by, people. Words to live by.

This post also appeared on Malvern Patch on January 10, 2012 where it generated a number of comments.

They have the ring of truth. They’re obvious, seem profound, and address the struggles we fight every day.

Why yes, I think when I read Live each moment as if it were your last. What sage advice! Or Carpe diem — of course! I’ve got to seize the day! That’s it! As soon as I take care of the things I have to do, like clean out the litter box or run to the grocery store, I am going to live in the moment and grab life by the horns.

Though they’re meant to be uplifting, platitudes so often bring me down.

I started thinking about this because recently I saw a beautiful poster full of the types of platitudes that immediately make me feel as if I’m living my life entirely wrong. And I started feeling guilty and apologetic. And I started feeling a lot of pressure. I have to get this poster, I thought. I have to hang it on the wall near my computer and pay heed to it every day. Then every moment of my life will have meaning which is important because life is short.

The truth is it’s not that simple. The truth is that the “truth” offered by most platitudes is unrealistic or impossible to achieve. The truth is that real life often gets in the way of living those platitudes. The truth is platitudes annoy the hell out of me. I guess the truth is, I’m just not a platitudes person.

I’ve decided I need a new platitude to hang near my computer.

I’m thinking of going with this:

Don’t let the platitudes get you down.

Footnote:

If you’re like me and hearing “It’s always darkest before the storm” makes you want to run screaming into the night, you might like the fine demotivational merchandise offered by Despair, Inc. Oh, please, they say. It’s not darkest before the storm. It’s always darkest just before it goes pitch black.

Last week, my husband and I took a hike in Valley Forge Park, one of our favorite places to walk. Usually we stick to the Joseph Plumb Martin Trail, a 5-mile paved loop around the park. It’s scenic, it’s comfortable, it’s familiar. But this time, we ventured into the woods, up the steep, rocky path of Mount Joy, and I lost my bearings. What was known became unknown. We discovered a footbridge, a rusty sign pointing to a long-gone observatory, and a road we did not recognize. Eventually, peering through the trees, I caught sight of a familiar landmark, and I was struck at how different it looked. Usually I’m outside the woods, looking in. But now I was inside the woods, looking out. The distance between the two points couldn’t have been more than 30 feet, but given my new vantage point, I might as well have been in a different park.

Two days later, we took a long bike ride in Philadelphia. We started at Kelly Drive, biking along the Schuylkill River, and ended up on the other side of the city, now riding beside the Delaware River. I looked up at the Ben Franklin Bridge looming overhead and was astounded to see a bicyclist, then another, speeding across the river.

“You can bike across the bridge!” I shouted to my husband. And so we did.

That evening, I posted on Facebook: “I’ve lived in the Delaware Valley my entire life, and I never knew you could bike across the Ben Franklin Bridge.”

I’ve driven near, over, and under that bridge, seen a million photos of it and never noticed the walkways lining its sides.

Both of these outings made me wonder: what else is right under my nose that I never see? And this reminded me of one of my daughter’s favorite quotes:

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” — Henry David Thoreau

I need to stop looking and start seeing.

Photo Credit

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because of two recent events: the wildfires in Arizona and New Mexico and the floods in the Midwest. Both disasters prompted widespread evacuations, and as I watched the television images of people preparing to leave their homes — leading horses onto trailers and cramming furniture into pick-up trucks — I began to wonder: if I found myself in the same situation, what would I do?

Given a short period of time to gather my belongings and flee, what things would I consider so irreplaceable and important that I couldn’t leave them behind?

Here’s the list I created:

• Husband, son, cat;
• Son’s cello;
• Computer;
• Important papers — passports, birth certificates, etc.;
• My purse containing wallet, phone, keys, and glasses;
• Photos — framed and in albums;
• Jewelry — two rings, two necklaces, and my three favorite pairs of earrings;
• Artwork — this is where I run into trouble. I should be saying clothing, but if I want to get most of the artwork into the minivan, I have to leave the clothing behind. I come from a family of artists and have paintings by my father, mother, and brother. One of my father’s paintings is 5’ x 4’ and getting that into the van is going to be real trouble.
• The quilt my mother took naps on when she was in kindergarten (sewn by her grandmother, my great-grandmother).
• Books. I have tons of books. Books I’ve loved, books my children have loved. At the least I have to save my copy of “Lenny’s Twenty Pennies,” a favorite book from my childhood that took me forever to track down, and a few of my children’s best loved books from when they were young (I’ve been saving them for future grandchildren).
• My special, beautiful, 1950s stoneware platter (gift from my mother);
• Framed and illustrated poem my daughter wrote for me;
• Frodo Baggins statue my son made for me when he was in fifth grade;
• … I’ve run out of room and probably out of time.

Right after I finished drafting this list, I found The Burning House, a website that asks a similar question: “If your house was burning, what would you take with you? It’s a conflict between what’s practical, valuable and sentimental.”

I’ve leaned toward the sentimental, because most of the things I cherish aren’t simply things, they’re connections to people I love, people I’ve lost, and people I used to be.

I suspect that if you went through the exercise of creating such a list, it, too, would contain mostly sentimental items. Am I right? If you had to flee your home, what would you save?

By my count, over the years I have watched my children perform in more than 14 school musicals, 52 school concerts, and four years worth of band cavalcades and marching band half-time shows. Add to that years of semi-annual voice, piano, and cello recitals and you’ll understand why I say I feel as if I’ve spent a quarter of my life sitting on unforgiving auditorium seats.

All of this is ending. My son, my youngest child, is graduating from high school. Now I’m in the season of “lasts” – last school concert, last marching band performance, last high school musical.

I was reminded of this two nights ago when I was at the high school for a music parents’ meeting. Arriving early, I passed the auditorium where a dress rehearsal for this year’s musical, Les Miserables, was in full swing. I stopped in the hallway and listened to the cast members singing and the pit musicians playing, the music escaping from beneath the closed doors. It was beautiful.

When my son applied to college this past fall, he wrote in an essay that, up to this point in his life, music has defined him. And it has – his musical activities have not only shaped him into the young man he’s become, but they have been one of the ways in which he has become part of the Great Valley community.

I didn’t realize until I started writing this post how much music has shaped me, too. Not because I play an instrument or sing, but because it, too, has helped me to become part of this community.

A few years ago, one of my husband’s clients, a woman who lives and works in the city, visited our home to deliver some documents. She looked around our property and said, “It’s beautiful here. But I could never live in a place that didn’t have a sense of community.”

I thought of some not-very-nice things to say, but bit my tongue.

As a music mom, I know that all it takes to find a sense of community is to get involved. So, for the six years that my daughter sang in school musicals, I sewed buttons and basted hems on cast costumes. And for the past four years, almost every Friday in the fall you would’ve found me at one of my favorite places: the Dog Shack at Great Valley Stadium. That’s the concession stand where music parents sell hot dogs, hamburgers, and the world’s best fries to fans who come out to watch the football game and marching band show. Those people in the “Shack” are part of my community, and now that my son is graduating, I’m sad to leave them behind.

When I was at the high school the other night, I saw parents helping with the musical: moving props, adding last-minute paint to the set, adjusting costumes. Here’s the thing: three of the parents I saw no longer have children at the high school – their kids have graduated, but the parents come back to help because this is one of the places where they feel a sense of community. They’re helping the students and spending time with old friends.

It’s that way in the Dog Shack, too. People return year-after-year because they want to help, and they feel welcome. So maybe next fall you’ll see me at the concession stand laughing with a friend and stirring a crock-pot full of meatballs.

This weekend, you’ll find me in the Great Valley High School auditorium, waiting for Les Mis to begin, praying that a woman with very big hair does not plop down in the seat in front of me. At the end, when the performers come out for their final bow, I’ll applaud for everyone: for the marvelous actors who brought the show to life, and the stage crew who made those set changes happen, and the lighting and sound crew who made sure the spotlight was in the right place at the right time and that the microphones worked. I’ll be applauding the director and the teachers and parents who helped. But most of all, I’ll be applauding the musicians because I’m a music mom and without their amazing playing the musical would not have been a musical.

Note: a slightly different version of this article originally appeared in Malvern Patch on May 4, 2011.