This story is part of the July 21 edition of Sunday Life. See all 13 stories . My mother was outside serving customers at the diner when she noticed her parents drive past.
She thought it was weird that her folks were together when they were also meant to be working. But soon her manager was approaching. “I’m going to drive you home,” he said gravely.
My mother had just turned 17. “My mother’s anxieties about something happening were always there like ghosts, haunting us through my childhood.” Credit: ISTOCK Nine kids had piled into a station wagon nearby.
Three of the nine were my mother’s younger siblings: 13-year-old fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, and their little brother, aged 12. They were sitting in the rear-facing seat of the station wagon’s trunk. The car was only going about 50km/h when it met a patch of mud, slid down an embankment, and hit a stump.
My mother’s siblings were thrown out through the car’s rear window, which was open. The boys picked themselves up. Like their friends in the front and back seats of the car, they were largely unharmed.
But an ambulance was called for their sister. Loading This is not my story. I wasn’t there.
I am aware of those who were there. The nine young people, their friends and families and communities, for whom what I am describing may have been the most unspeakable day of their life: not a story at all. What should I do with the fact that the events in question are also a part of me, like the curly hair.
