Last excerpt where I left off:
And then I looked on the date I was to be discharged:
October 22, 1974
Holy Shit. I stared at the date. My hands began to shake. The world around me became incredibly still, the sounds around me disappeared and became background noise.
October 22, 1974. You have got to be kidding me.
That’s the same date as the car accident. At Queens. In the Porsche. Will Alex. The exact same date. Of all the days of the year, you mean to tell me the day I was going to go home to be in my mothers arms who I had been crying for 3 weeks for, and the nurse finds a hear murmur and I”m being transferred to another hospital is the SAME day as a my first major car accident where I almost died?
This is not a coincidence. It isn’t anymore. It can’t be. I flumped into my crossed legs on the living room floor with the papers spread all around me. Then I jumped up sending the papers flying.
“FINE! I believe it! I Believe it! I believe it’s all connected! I yelled out loud into the living room to no one but myself.
“Now what?”…
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{ continued…. }
I plugged this new found exact date into the chart I had made that was outlining all the major events of trauma in my life – the surgeries and illnesses. For example, I had already had mononucleosis 3 times and Epstein Bar syndrome. Called the kissing disease, this was not how I first contracted it! I was only twelve years old the first time I got it in Gr.7. Hadn’t so much as hugged a boy yet! It was the beginning of my junior year. Hell, sure may have wanted to, but it hadn’t happened yet. Let me retract that statement. I had been going to school with the same boys and girls since kindergarten, so actually no there wasn’t a boy I wanted to kiss yet, but maybe, maybe he was around the grade 7 hall. I’m not sure, I maybe I wasn’t kissing material. I still remember playing spin the bottle and a girlfriend’s 10 bathroom mansion in the basement and being called into the closet with one of the long blond banged boys. I hadn’t kissed a boy yet and certainly this really wasn’t how I envisioned it going down! I still remember him saying to me, “Hey Kate, do you mind if we don’t actually kiss, but just stay in here long enough to make it seem like we had?”
Heart-drop now.
Talk about crush’n a pre-teen’s heart raging with self-esteem fitting-in peer issues! ‘Just the same, i didn’t want it, but that kinda stung too. Little confusing too.
I got mono from just being around my mom who had picked it up in the air at an arts course she was talking at a community college. Good Morning Grade seven! I missed the first three months of school. ‘Watched a lot of spiderman and the Flintstones at Noon, Y & R at 4pm and slept. Don’t worry the school passed me regardless. ‘Said, I would have “gotten all” that I missed anyways and was an A-student. Gotta like that.
I plugged in the date the heart murmur was found on my just 6 month premature, alive 3 weeks body into the chart. I sat there staring. What does this all mean? What does this tell me? Why has all this stuff happened to me? It cannot be a coincidence. It can’t.
What am I missing?
I waited for something to come to me.
I remembered another car accident I had been in. Shit. That’s five car accidents I have been in. Geezuz.
Is someone trying to kill me?
I keep surviving. ‘Not mean’t to die. But why? This has got to stop. What am I not getting?
I made or added other columns. I put in what had happened to me in the accident or illness or surgery. There was consistency to those too.
It was getting clearer, but not completely crystal clear. The accidents – I almost die. My life flashes before my eyes. I’m going to die, but I make it.
Spinning – out of control – turning – twisting – my neck – impact – bridges – plummet to death – fear – soft landings…..
I would look at the end of the chart where the accident was and trace back. What happened before that? And before that? And before that? What’s the first thing that happened where there was trauma?
My birth. My miraculous premature birth.
So?
I survived. What. Hmm, Are they’re any other similarities with what happened to me over these 30 years?
Car Accidents. A bunch of them. Why? Maybe there is something about what happens in them….
What’s the same about the car accidents? People always say, “Shit, you must be a bad driver.”
Nope. I’m never the driver. Never have been. Always a passenger.
Hmm….There is something in that…
I revisited all the accidents.
5 years old – Hit by a Nun – In a Van – Mom’s driving. My twin and I are in the van.
16 – “Head for the Clear” Van flip into the snowbank – Dad’s driving. My twin and I are in the van.
16 – Garbage Dump Road Van Flip at camp – A fellow staff friend is driving – 2 other staff friends and I.
21 – Porsche 911 Accident – My first puppylove is Driving – We dropped off my roommate at home – Only I am in the car with him.
29 – Christmas Accident – My Dad is driving. My twin and I our in the van.
Weird. I’m close right.
3/5 of those accidents I’m with my parents. Once with my mom driving. It was the Nun’s fault. My mother taught me how to drive in Fitzroy Provincial park across from the Quyon ferry that her family owned and operated and she spent her cherished summers. She was a good driver as much as I knew. The other two my father was driving. All of them were in vans.
My twin was in 3/5 of them. That seems significant. He’s also reasonably ok. So is everyone. Most of them, only I seem to bear the brunt of the accident and have injuries and have physical consequences.
There were two other interesting things my Bond mind pieced together. Funny, you don;t really see James Bond piecing things together, he just does it. Goes there. Dawns an Armani suit, skis down the mountain side onto a boat, kills the bad guy where he knew he was and gets the girl. Here I am trying to piece the pieces of my life together to make sense of the puzzle.
There was another accident that I’m not sure whether to include in this count. Something did happen, it was a close call. What was interesting, was it was in van, my father was driving and my twin had a little mishap. We were visiting my relatives in London, Ontario. I think we were about 8-10 years old, somewhere in there and my father was driving. Out of know where a cyclist tried to duck out on the road in front of my Dad. My father slammed on the brakes and my twin went flying forward. His tiny chest was bare with only his swim trunks on and SMACK he hit the front of the big console on the van. Poor little guy. I remember how red his chest was. I also remember how angry he was as he leaned out the window and screamed every exploitive an 8 year-old knows at the cyclist.
“You stupid – poohead – dumb-dumb turkey!” { Turkey derived from my father’s normal choice of expletives at bad driving. Well, at least while the kids were in the car.
My father understablly let him have it! Adding after the trail was finished and his 8 yearold voice started cracking….
“Yah! Turkey!”
The other accident? The other accident? There was synchronicity in that one too…and it didn’t involve my parents. Directly that is.
{ to be continued… }
I’m getting closer…
007 Fem Bond,
Kate
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Locale: Chocolate Leather Club Chair { ‘could use some distressing }, Starbucks, Toronto
On Deck: Mirrors by Emma Louise
Mood: Mercury in retrograde is kicking my literary web butt.
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Kate Flood 