Chain reaction: C-4 sever, wreck #3

July 7, 2021  

Prompt: chain reaction 

~*~

Anxiety.  Often the end result of a chain reaction. Triggers, sometimes unconscious, cause dominoes, until I wonder, How the fuck did I get here? Why do I feel this way? 

It's like bouncing around in a hall of mirrors, or in a structure surrounded by water which reflects off itself reaching into an ocean of lunacy. 

The third bad wreck. I've written about it numerous times. I think about it almost daily. My husband, John, and I regularly mention it, amazed how Mom and Dad continued to thrive afterward.

I would say it was the worst of the three bad wrecks. 

But, the first bad wreck, when Dad was in a coma and had Jesus come and tell him to wake up. Seems about as close to death as one can be. That was before he and Mom started the family.

And, the second bad wreck, when Mom was unable to recall our, her children's, names; unable to properly care for herself, even though she was in her thirties; and had to endure multiple rounds of shock treatments, in the 1960s. Seems about as close to lost in a house of mirrors as one can be.

July 5, 1983

I stand in the industrial kitchen at the long, shiny, steel counter that is held up by steel legs and has a steel shelf underneath where giant steel pots and pans and bowls are kept. On a big wooden cutting board, I am cutting vegetables fresh from the garden. Joe stands across from me, doing the same. We both work in Food Services, in The Way Corps, at the Way College in Rome City, Indiana.

"Something is really wrong," I say to Joe.

"What do you mean?" he asks.

"I don't know. Just something feels wrong. I've felt it all morning."

"Have you spoken in tongues about it?" he asks.

"Yes. All morning," I reply.

Speaking in tongues is perfect prayer. It is the spirit praying for whatever the need may be, since as humans we can't begin to conceive of the multitude of needs on any given day in any given moment.

A few hours later I am summoned to the head office where leadership informs me, "Your brother called. He needs you to call him right away. Your father has been in a wreck."

I call Ted and he tells me.

"It's serious. Dad's paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors say it's a C-4 sever. He's at Baptist Hospital in Winston." 

I don't leave Indiana right away. Instead, I tell the leadership what has happened. The whole campus lifts Dad and the family in prayer. I take a walk around the hill. There are small, empty alcoves in the sides of the hill for stations of the cross that, I think, once housed statues. Remnants of the previous residents of the property, the Sisters of the Order of the Precious Blood, a Roman Catholic order of nuns. 

But The Way isn't Roman Catholic and teaches that Mary worship is idolatry and that so-called saints which people pray to are false or, at worst, devil spirits, and that praying to them opens the door for devil spirit possession. I am a Way believer, so I know not to pray to these idols. But I do think about what I've heard of the Sisters that once lived here and how this property offered healing with its mineral springs, which are no longer used. 

God...

Jesus didn't go to Lazarus right away.

He waited three days. 

I don't know what to do.

Should I wait?

Should I go?

I choose to wait. A couple days later my brother calls and says I should come home. So I go, fully prepared to heal Daddy. 

Jesus made the lame to walk. I can do the same, as long as I believe. Believing is the key. Dad will have to believe too. I know the devil did this to Daddy, to keep Daddy from the accuracy of the Word. The devil is always after the Word; his mission is to steal, kill, and destroy. 

Before I was relocated in May to the Indiana Campus, Dad had come to visit me for Parent's Weekend in April at The Way College in Emporia, Kansas. I was embarrassed when Dad wore his plaid golf pants to a meeting, the meeting where he signed up for the Power for Abundant Living Class. But it was fun when Dad and I went dancing together at a local pub. 

I had no idea that's the last time I would see Dad dance... 

Or wear the plaid golf pants...

I would say it was the worst of the three bad wrecks.

~*~

Nothing was working: Trash on the windshield, wreck #2

July 7, 2021

Prompt: Nothing was working

~*~

The first bad car wreck happened before Mom and Dad started the family. They landed in a creek where Mom had to use a straw to suck blood from Dad's trachea. She spit the blood in the creek. The ambulance whisked Dad away to the hospital where he underwent surgery. A metal plate was implanted in his forehead. He lay in a coma for three weeks until Jesus appeared to him under a lone tree in a field and told him, "It's time to wake up now." 

The second bad wreck happened around 1960. Mom was driving. My five-year old brother sat in the front passenger seat. One-year-old me sat in an infant carrier in the back seat, sucking my baby bottle. We were on our way to pick up my eight-year old sister at the movie theater.

"Ted, take off that football helmet," Mom demanded.

"No. Not gonna do it," Ted retorted.

Back and forth, back and forth.

"We are going to pick up Becky at the movie theater. Now take it off."

But Ted would not comply. 

All of a sudden Mom screamed, but not at Ted. The trash truck in front of us had malfunctioned, and trash came pouring out, covering our windshield. 

Another scream. 

We crash.

Mom is whipped forward and backward.

Ted flies into the windshield, making a giant crack in the glass with his football helmet. 

Mom manages to turn her head and look at me in the back seat. 

I don't have a face. 

She goes into shock. 

The truth was, I had a face. But my baby bottle had burst and my face was covered with milk and bottle debris. 

Mom stayed in shock. Whatever the wreck did to her, she couldn't remember our names. She was like a child unable to make decisions and care for herself properly. That's when she was first institutionalized, in the psychiatric ward at Emory Hospital in Atlanta. I don't know how long she was there. A lady named Katie, whom I have no memory of, helped Dad care for us kids. I feel sure Uncle Fred's family helped too. We didn't live far from them in Daytona. Fred was Dad's eldest brother.

After Mom came home, she still had trouble, especially with memory. So Dad and the doctors decided we should move nearer to her origins in North Carolina. Maybe that would help her memory come back.

So we moved to Hickory, North Carolina, around 1961. But Mom had to be institutionalized again. This time at Broughton Psychiatric Hospital in Morganton, North Carolina. 

I don't know how long Mom was in Broughton, but my older sister said it seemed like a long time. The family would visit Mom, and she'd show us the ceramic crafts she had made. 

Her mind found its way back; she was able to come home (at least) by the time I was four years old. I remember she had to wear a collar around her neck, an injury left over from the whiplash. She'd undergone electroconvulsive therapy both at Emory and Broughton. The shock treatments probably caused some of her memory loss, but they also helped her recover. Duality. 

Mom got a job selling Avon and then encyclopedias. By the late 1960s she was the top, national, Compton's Encyclopedia salesperson for five years in a row. 

In the mid-1990s I found Mom on her kitchen floor after a suicide attempt. I then learned the rest of the story about why Mom had been institutionalized back in the 1960s.

Until I was around eight years old, I slept with a baby bottle. I hugged it  for comfort as I fell asleep. I didn't suck the nipple; there was only air in the bottle, no liquid.  

Instead of a security blanket, I had adopted a security bottle. 

Choppy seas: In the creek, wreck #1

Penned June 23, 2021

Prompt: choppy seas

~*~

The story goes that Mom and Dad eloped. 

Mom's name was Flo Rae. She was the next to youngest of ten living siblings. Would have been twelve, but two others died young. A boy whose name was Timmy, I think. And an infant, who was just called "the infant." Mom grew up in Balls Creek, North Carolina, on a family farm. Her daddy, Ed, worked at the sawmill. Mom told me that one time John Dillinger parked in their gravel driveway. 

Dad's name was Albert Watkins, named (in part) after his great uncle, Albert Galiton Watkins, a lawyer and pro-confederate politician who served at least one term  in the US House. Dad was the youngest of three boys. His brothers' names were John and Fred. 

As I was growing up, Uncle Fred was my favorite uncle. He was a photographer and lived in Daytona Beach. He owned a Jaguar; and Aunt Lucille, his wife, owned a talking parrot that would sing Dixie. Aunt Lucille helped Uncle Fred in his photography business; she applied the paint touch-ups to enhance color in the photographs, before the days of real color photography. Fred and Lucille had three children -- Freddie, Linda, and Suzy, all older than me. I had a crush on Freddy. Linda and Suzie were on lots of Daytona Beach post cards made from photos that Uncle Fred took. Tourists bought the post cards. Linda looked like Cher, the singer. 

At some point Dad moved to Hickory, in his later teens or maybe early 20s. He and Mom met I don't know where. But they eloped when Dad joined the Coast Guard and was going to be sent to New York City. 

Story goes that after they eloped, they went back to Momma's farm house. Mom's family had a meeting discussing whether or not they'd allow the marriage to be. Mom and Dad were put in an upstairs bedroom while the rest of the family talked it out in the dining room. Mom took an empty drinking glass and laid the open end on the hardwood floor and placed her ear on the bottom of the glass so she could hear the discussion downstairs. My Grandpa Ed, who was apparently a man of few words, ended the discussion with, "They made their bed, let them sleep in it." And that was that. 

Mom moved with Dad to NYC and got a job working as a bank teller in the Empire State Building while Dad went off to help monitor the Eastern Seaboard during WWII. He was a radar operator.

When I look at their old photos, Dad was quite handsome and Mom quite pretty. Mom's hair was wavy-curly and dark. She was light-skinned with blue-grey eyes. I don't know if her curls were natural, but maybe that's where I got my wavy-curly hair. Dad had a lean, strong, chiseled face. He had dark hair, high cheek bones, dark olive skin, and brown eyes. Mom always said he was part Cherokee, coming from western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. But I don't know if that's the case. I don't know how much any of the stories are the case. 

After the war, Mom and Dad moved to Daytona Beach and lived there for some 15 years. That's where they started our family. All three of us kids were born there. My sister Becky. My brother Ted. And me. I was the youngest. 

I'm not sure if it was in Florida or New York where the first bad wreck happened, but I think it was in Florida. I think that's maybe when the shape of Dad's forehead and face changed, from less chiseled to more round. 

The wreck happened before Mom and Dad started the family. Story goes, when they crashed, they landed in a creek. Mom had to use a paper straw to suck blood out of Dad's throat. After the ambulance arrived, Dad was taken to the hospital and underwent surgery on his head. A metal plate was implanted in his forehead. He was in coma for some three weeks.

In my late teens I asked Dad about his coma. He said he had a vision just before waking up. He met Jesus in a field under a lone tree, and Jesus said, "It's time to wake up now."