Crash

I remember the sneeze and then looking up at a red light.  My right foot jumped to the breaks as my arms gripped the steering wheel and braced for impact.  The thud of my blue car hitting a suburban unforgettably rang through my ears.  I don't recall the air bags deploying because my face was numb from their explosive power, but the smell, burnt and putrid, enveloped my senses.  I could feel wet beneath my nose and I reached up to touch what I expected to be blood and was surprised by what I found.  Snot.  From that distracting sneeze. I could hear my sons cries and my daughter began babbling in shock.  I whipped around to make sure she had kept her seat belt on. She had, thank heavens!  I began panting and panicking, shaking like a chihuahua.  If it weren't for that horrid smell, I might have not believed it was real.  I crashed.  I crashed the car with my babies in the back seat.

I remember crying.  I couldn't stop.  Through violent heaves and desperate sobs I kept repeating, "My babies!  My babies!"  Even though both we safe, unharmed, and quiet once I pulled them out of the car.  I was overwhelmed by guilt and shame, and the tears reflected the inner turmoil causing a great deal of nausea.  The other driver tried to comfort me and told me he wasn't mad or hurt.  But I was hurt and mad.  Hurt with dislocated ribs, bruises, and a busted lip, and mad at myself because, although I didn't crash on purpose, I was to blame.

The following days were difficult.  When my eyes would close the first thing I would see was the side of that tan suburban.  Then there was that thud.  I couldn't stop hearing that thud.  Andrea kept talking about it.  Hourly, I'd hear her telling bear about the sneeze, the crash, and my red teeth.  It pained me to hear, but I let her talk and process and cope.  Through all of her retellings I began to see immense bravery that surrounded my daughter like a protective armor.  She must have got that from her father.

I was not brave.  The thought of driving again sent me into a shaken and panicked state.  Even riding as a passenger was traumatic.  Every bump and flashing light turned me into a white-knuckled cling-on, gripping at the dash like it was my lifeline.  Sometimes I would cry, and Paul would softly reassure me.

Two days after the crash I knelt beside my daughter's bed and asked her to pray.  Unprompted, she began.  She thanked Heavenly Father for the things she loved: Grandma Gragraw, the supermarket, bear, vitamins.  Then she petitioned Him for help; not for herself, but for me.  She asked Him to help me remember Jesus and be calm.  As tears rolled down my cheeks she ended her pray with one final request: Help me take care of my mommy.  My daughter was not only brave, but wonderfully loving.  In that moment I knew I would be okay because I had faith in my Heavenly Father, and I had faith in Annie's faith.

Post-it notes

Jeremy + BYU = catastrophe.  It could be because it was one of the few places I actually drove to almost daily.  During my first semester I remember locking my keys in my car time and time again and having to call my mom to come bring me a spare.  One of those times I locked my cell phone and backpack in my car as well.  I walked up to the Bean Museum and asked a lady at the desk if I could use the phone because I had locked my keys in my car.  She told me no because there were pay phones on campus.  When I explained that my backpack was in the car with my wallet she finally gave in.  My mom had me make five copies of my car key to put in every bag I owned.
On a particularly sunny spring day I was walking to the parking lot after an invigorating hour of Anthropology.  As I came around the Marriott Center and started down the hill I noticed a neon green car parked close to my own.  I wondered who had the confidence to drive that crazy looking vehicle.  I got closer to the lot and I noticed two boys doing something to the green car.  I squinted and noticed the car had an unusual texture.  A post-it note texture.  How cute!  I thought.  They're doing that cute Mormon asking-out thing where they go totally over the top go ask a girl to go ice blocking.  She was going to have a fun story to tell her roommates.

Upon further squinting and staring I realized that the bright green car was actually mine!  Poor Jeremy was be accosted by two boys and some brightly colored post-it notes.  My heart sank.  Those two boys spent so much time and effort decorating my little Corolla, and I felt mortified at the thought of having to tell them they got the wrong car.  All their hard work down the drain.

I slowed my pace, dreading the conversation I was about to have.  I walked up to the guy on the right side of the car covering my door in purple paper.  "What's going on?"  I said cautiously.  The boy on the other side of the car peaked over Jeremy's roof and I recognized him.  I had been on a date with him two days earlier.  They were trying to post-it note MY car.  Since I caught him in the act he didn't finish, but he spent about $70 on post-it notes.  Poor guy.

I got lots of honks and stares driving home.  But to the credit of the people who make post-it notes, they stuck really well and I only lost about three driving down University Avenue at 55 miles per hour.  The temperature dipped that night, and at about nine o'clock Braden and I pealed and pealed post-it notes until our fingers were sufficiently numb.  I captured these pictures beforehand:

Jeremy

I'm buying a new car!  Well, it's not exactly new, but it feels new to me.  My old car, Jeremy, has served me well for the past five years.  We've been through a lot together.  He was a junky little thing that my dad fixed up for his teenage drivers but became my very own.  Because Jeremy often had trouble starting, I would lift the hood and hammer the starter.  You can imagine the looks I got in parking lots across Utah County.  Sometimes people would offer help to the 5' 2" girl under the hood and sometimes they'd just stare.  Oddly enough, as my pregnant belly grew I got more stares than offers, but it was okay because I didn't need help.  I was one of the few non-mechanic people that could find the starter tucked underneath the engine deep in the belly of the car.

Jeremy was the reason I got a cell phone.  I started attending BYU in January of 2008 which happened to be a very snowy month.  I registered my car with the school but didn't receive my parking sticker in the mail by the time school began.  So, I had to park by the stadium and walk almost two miles to my first class on the opposite side of campus. . . in the snow. . . uphill. . . both ways. . . barefooted!  Okay, I had shoes, but they had holes in them and had to be removed as soon as I got to class so my socks could dry a little.

Wednesday night I had a class that ended at about 9:00 PM (Psychology, as I recall) and hiking down to my car was long and creepy.  Campus was almost deserted and the street leading down to the stadium was dark as the trees lining the sidewalks blocked out the glow of the street lamps.  My socks were soaked through and the nightly desert temperature drop was turning my toes blue.  The stadium lot was vast and empty.  My car was buried in nearly a foot and a half of snow.  I brushed off the door with my naked fingers only to find it frozen shut.  I leaned up against the seams hoping my body heat would melt the ice, which it did.  I slithered into the drivers seat and stuck the key in the ignition to start warming up the car while I brushed down the windows.  The silence pierced my soul.  I think silence is what fear sounds like.  Jeremy was dead.  And I didn't have a cell phone.

I began to panic.  Who would find me in the middle of a dark parking lot buried in snow at 9:30 at night?  I imagined sleeping in my car but feared my parents would call the police when I wouldn't come home.  I walked over to the dark Language Center and prayed a door would be unlocked.  When I found one the tense muscles running down my back relaxed slightly.  The lights were off in most of the building and I walked up two flights of stairs before finding one man who had stayed late in his office.  At first I asked if I could use his phone, but when he found out my car was dead he offered me a jump and thankfully, he had cables ('cause I sure didn't).

After the jump I headed home with a heart full of thankfulness.  While I sat at a stoplight still four miles from my house I sang along with the radio loudly.  "I'm not going to write you a love song, 'cause you asked for it, 'cause you need one. . ." (You sang that in your head, didn't you?)  And as I unassumingly belted, my car lurched forward suddenly and I felt myself jerk against my seat belt.  I looked in my review mirror only to see black, the headlights of the car behind me crunched up in my bumper.  After a split moment of body-numbing shock, I snapped back into reality.  What do I do?  All of those grueling months of Drivers Ed taught me that I should pull over so we could exchange information, make sure no one was hurt, and possibly file a police report.  The stop light turned green, I slowly pulled over to the side of the road, and the van that hit me punched the gas and sped away into the snowy night.  And I, stupid me, with my jaw on the floor watched them drive away.

My arms shook as I turned into the mall parking lot.  Drivers Ed didn't not teach me what to do if I ever had a nearly dead battery and got hit and abandoned four miles from home with no cell phone in the middle of a snow storm.  So I took some deep breaths, cried, and turned back onto State Street.  When I pulled up in front of my house I walked around to inspect my bumper.  Indented in the plastic was the license plate number of the hit-and-run van outlined in snow-melting salt.  Genius.

So, I got a cell phone, thanks to Jeremy.