Memorial Glen

    Every once in a while I come across a memory that’s hard to make sense of. Like the time my mom put her face through a windshield. She was driving drunk in the rain at fifty-five miles an hour and swerved off the road to avoid hitting what she thought was a dog. She hit a tree instead. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt and her head slammed into the windshield. Not bursting through it, thanks to modern shatter proof glass, but leaving the shape of her head forever imprinted in my mind. I can see it now. Just above the steering wheel. It bubbled out like someone threw a bowling ball at it from inside the car. There were thousands of broken pieces held together by an invisible film. There were rays of light radiating from it like a starburst.

    I was in the backseat of the car, strapped into my car seat. Only two or three years old. I don’t remember the crash. What I remember is red and blue lights, flashing through a haze or rain and broken glass. What I remember is my mom’s head slumped over the steering wheel for a long time. What I remember is her turning around and looking at me, her face all busted up and covered in blood. What I remember is her smiling, and telling me everything was going to be OK. I remember her being helped out of the car and taken away. I remember her being placed on a stretcher and rolled to an ambulance and put in the back. I remember the doors closing and the ambulance driving away.

    I remember seeing her in the hospital, lying in a bed with tubes and wires attached to her. She is wearing a hospital gown that made her look no bigger than a child herself. I remember it being cold in there, and lots of buzzing and beeping noises that made me want to get out of there. I remember her trembling hand, reaching out to me. I remember seeing the bones in her wrist and being afraid. And as always, I remember her face, smiling at me, and telling me that everything was going to be OK. Everything was going to be alright.

    And I believed her, because my mom was born of Love. She was like a weed growing up from a crack in the sidewalk. A crack not even big enough for a seed to fall into. She could smile at me through a smashed up windshield, or a broken nose and a black eye from an angry lover. She could smile at me from a hospital bed, with her head all wrapped in bandages. She could smile at me from sixty five year old eyes, full of nothing but pain and loneliness, and sadness, and tell me that everything would be OK. That everything would be alright. And I’d believe her. Because she was always right. Like I said, my mom was born of love.