Three feet

"If that truck had hit three feet forward of where it did," the officer paused and tilted his head down towards the hospital gurney where my mom lay, "you and I would not be having this conversation."

My mom scratched her neck with a shaking hand. Her skin was red and chapped from the cervical collar she'd been wearing for the past three hours. After the x- rays ("you're not broken" the doctor said) she could drink water that didn't come from a swab and her head "felt like it was 25 lbs" as her muscles spasmed with soreness and new found freedom from plastic and velcro.

"Do you have anything else to add?" the officer asked.
You're asking my mom that question? She launches into a full recap of the story of "how the Cadi got totaled/how because of the strong bones of the Cadi my mom did not."

When she got to the part about walking over to the truck that hit her I started to giggle.
"I saw smoke coming out of the truck cab and thought it might catch on fire or explode," she started. "So I walked over to the truck and opened the driver's door. I said, 'Get out of the car now!' but he was dazed so I had to repeat it."
The officer stopped chewing his gum and said with a playful smirk, "This is just getting better and better..."
"So I got him out of the car and closed the door in case there was a fire. Then I told him to go sit on the curb."
Yes, my mom the flight attendant, mother of three, gets T-boned and then goes to save the kid who hit her.

So my sister and I are giggling, giving each other "that's our mom" looks, but a part of me thinks about the three feet thing. I was three feet from being an orphan yesterday. Maybe two feet away from being a permanent caregiver to a mangled parent. Maybe a foot away from shattered bones taking months to heal. A few inches away from more than the bruises and stiff neck and minor cut my mom walked away with.

She was basically parked at the time. She wasn't being absent minded on the freeway or crossing through an intersection vulnerable to a traffic light runner. She was on our street, the one I've driven up and down thousands of times, the one I fell asleep on driving home from theater rehearsal one night as a teenager and grazed the bushes, the one we Goff girls have had countless talks on while taking evening walks "to the [public] mailbox," the one my dad exercised our dogs on every day for my entire childhood.

She was waiting to make a turn. And she got hit. Hard. The car is crumpled in two feet on the drivers side. My mom's side. She said that when she saw the truck coming straight for her, getting bigger and bigger, everything slowed down and she had nano-second thoughts:

The first: It's all over.
The second: No! No, I'm not done! I've got a lot of things I need to do for the girls. (My sisters and I. She said she saw the three of us in front of her as the No I'm not done came up.)
The third: I need to get the hell out of the way. (That's when she leaned as far as she could from the soon-to-be crushed in door)

It makes me think of all the other close calls we have. Sometimes we know it (this one would be pretty freaking hard not to notice) and then there are all of those other moments that we might not even know about where timing is everything. Like crossing the street or flying in a plane or slipping in the bathtub or anything to do with driving. I guess timing is always everything, huh?

It makes me think that instead of living safer, being more careful, I want to live more dangerously, really take advantage of every opportunity for adventure I can. (I can hear my mom groaning at this point- she's had to deal with a few of my adventures. Whenever I bring up the current one she says, "I'm a mom. I worry. No matter how old you are. I worry." I love you too, Mom)
It makes me think that I don't say "I love you" or "I appreciate you" enough to those I love and appreciate. I am so thankful for what I have, for who I know, for opportunities I've been given (and taken). But this whole life thing doesn't last forever. And it can all change in a second.

The police officer walky talky-ed dispatch for the Incident Number. I scribble it down under Pick up prescription for pain meds and Call the insurance company and Get personal belongings from Cadi.

"Do you have any other questions?" he says.
"Should I have any other questions?" my mom retorts.
"Nope. That's it. Let your insurance company take care of it. And buy another nice heavy car."
"OK. Thank you Officer."

My mom reaches out her hand to shake the officers. He pulls back saying something like You don't know where this hand has been but I think I'd have the same policy of no handshakes with people in the hospital if I were a cop.
My mom, offering a closed fist, says, "How about a bump?"

Yup, that is how I know my mom is on the road to recovery: she fist bumped the officer on his way out of the ER, much to his delight.

She's at home now. Sore as hell. But at home.

Dear Mom, as much as I try to be OK with this everybody dies thing, I'm just not ready. I'm glad you weren't either. You are an amazing person and I still have a lot to learn from you.
So don't pull an adventure to the ER like this again anytime soon.
I'm a daughter. No matter how old you are, I worry.