Make A Leap!

Yesterday was the culmination of one-fourth of a day for the last four years in Leap Day. It is an extra day none of us really plan for. At my house, its an extra day on the pay period for work. Its an extra day to get things done or its an extra day to not have to plan for.
Is it really?
We've been collecting the time every day. Are we accountable for the seconds and moments that don't seem important because its just a little bit. I think of how many times one of my kids has said, "Hey mom." and my response has been, "just a second..."
How many seconds have passed me by? Moments when I could've been spending time, or money, or effort on my most important things?
Yesterday, because it was the day after my birthday, my husband spent his precious moments with me!
He took the day off of work. We sat in the back yard and soaked up the sun. We lay in bed together, because it was warm. We spent an hour with a good friend of mine and his family, because we could. We looked for my sister-in-law's dog. We visited my favorite neighbor and her new baby and we ate pizza with my mom and step dad. It was awesome!
It wasn't the most exciting thing out there...it was better. It was a leap for me to just relax and be with the people I love.
Sometimes I get so worked up and worried about doing all the right things, being all the right places and keeping everyone moving that i lose my ability to feel the pure pleasure the world has to offer.
Sunshine after a cold winter. Friends and family who love us no matter what. the peace and beauty of everything God has created and given to us mere mortals. Life can be hard when we're running around like ants on a hot skillet. For one day, every four years, take a leap and just enjoy your blessings and love the world around you.
Or better yet...don't wait for one day a long time off. Do it today, for just a moment. Realize how good you have it and how blessed you are today!

Grief and Sorrow Forever?

While reading a book last night, I fell apart...again. The story was about three children who are facing their father's impending death due to cancer. Perhaps it was because the writer was talented. Perhaps its because I'm a few weeks short of the birthday that will indicate that I've lived longer than my dad ever did. More likely though, its because after all this time, I still grieve.
I grieve the Grandfather I know he would have been. I mourn the loss of his influence in my life. I sorrow for the moments with my kids and my family that I know we can't share with him. I should be over it by now. I should be able to let go of the pain and just bask in the memories. After all, he's been gone far longer than he lived in my life. I've fought with this concept for years, until my grandmother died.
She was 96 years old, was in a care facility and had over 121 kids, grand-kids, great grand kids and even great, great grand-kids. She was loved, admired and celebrated for being the amazing woman she truly was. Yet, I stood beside her casket, held her cold, empty hand and cried.
My uncle Kendall was there with his wife and I apologized for falling apart. "I know she's better off with her husband, kids and her family in heaven. Its selfish for me to feel so much pain when I know she is happy and has been welcomed home with love and honor."
My uncle quoted a scripture to me from Doctrine and Covenants section 49 in which he told me that tears are supposed to be shed for those we love. Its a measure of how much we loved them. I've pondered this idea for some time as my mother-in-law passed away, a good friend who was like a father to me passed and even as I have shed many a tear for neighbors and friends who grieve the loss of their loved ones. Shouldn't it be easier when they are old? Shouldn't we be happy for our little ones who've gone home to live in love and peace with God? Shouldn't our belief in eternity and forever heal our sorrows?
The answer is no.
While its true that grief is not a measure of love, its also true that love lasts forever. Its the only thing that does. If you loved someone then it never ends. It doesn't diminish with the appropriate amount of time. It doesn't lessen as you live longer and their life span was but a mere moment. The breadth and depth of your love cannot be measured in time, so why would your sorrow?
Hope, laughter, memories and other loves will find places in your broken heart, but it will remain broken. Healing, scarred, battered, wounded but broken.
Hearts aren't like concrete or glass. Once broken they become weaker and more fragile.  While you're healing and hurting your heart will shrivel, ache, and feel like it may kill you...healing hurts. Your heart will knit itself back together. It will be stronger in the long run and bigger for the space it has made for your love.
Feel it, embrace it and welcome the eternal love that will never end. The tears will come. Often and painful because your love is immeasurable. Until you and the ones you love are back together again, your love will be constant and distant with out a physical presence to assure you that the pain and sorrow will not last forever. I never expect to 'get over' my father's death. I will never 'get over' how much I love him.  It has become a bitter sweet reminder of what I miss and what awaits me in a beautiful future. If I can just be patient and believe that my love is not lost on nothingness. Its a collection of everything I'll give to my Dad, my kids, my family and friends. I'll take the grief and sorrow...he was worth loving! 

What Luck!

My neighbor slid off his roof and shattered his ankle. "What a blessing," I heard his wife say on more than one occasion.
I'm sure when he awoke with a carbon fiber rod drilled through his heel to reset the bones, neither he nor his wife thought it was a blessing.
The 17 year old girl who lives up the street from me, swerved off the road, landed in a ditch and blew her tire. "That was lucky," her Dad told me as he pried the shredded wheel away from the bent rim. The restitution she had to do for missing school that day didn't seem much like luck to her.
Twenty years ago, I went to Oakland California to visit the LDS temple there. While I was inside, my right eye filled up with blood. Six months later that eye was being removed from my head. I was on a constant morphine drip for weeks. The other eye was burned with lasers and permanently scarred. From that point on...I was blind.
That wasn't the end though. I lost more of my sight to a cataract and finally all of it to glaucoma.
I will never drive again, see my children's faces, or look into my husband's beautiful blue eyes. I'll never enjoy another sunset, see a baby's smile, or look in the mirror. What Luck!
All those years ago, I couldn't always appreciate what a blessing blindness was going to be. Things that aren't important don't distract me. Clothes, hair, fancy cars, pretty houses. The list is unending. I hear laughter. I feel love. I bask in the touch of other people. I absorb friendship, conversation and affection like its water in the desert.
My husband pointed out to me. If I hadn't gone blind. I couldn't have qualified for the insurance coverage I needed to spend weeks in the hospital with premature babies. I wouldn't have had the financial ability to get either my pancreas or kidney transplants and I'd probably be dead by now. All of the gifts and blessings in my life have stemmed from what most people think of as tragedy. Misfortune is simply God working miracles and humans being impatient.
My neighbor didn't break his neck when he fell off that roof. His wife recognized that she could have been a widow instead of a nurse for a few weeks. What a blessing!
The teenager up the street from me, ended up a little inconvenienced, instead of splattered across the highway because she crashed into that ditch instead of rolling the car the opposite direction. Her Dad knew a spoiled tire was nothing compared to a lost daughter. What Luck!
Life is hard. Its also full of joy, people who love you and more beauty than broken. The ability to see the good in the midst of all the darkness is a blessing. If the darkness is too thick? If the doubt weighs you down? Imagine what misery would await you if you weren't so lucky.

Can You Stimulate Happiness?

Perhaps because the shimmer and shine of the holidays is wearing off, my kids are starting to feel the after effects of the New Year. Post Party blues, is common this time of year. The year has started again and it feels in many ways like starting over. This might be a good thing if you're looking forward to an increase in job opportunity, fame, fortune or just a better lifestyle. For many though it starts over the amount of money which has to be paid for co-pay's and deductibles on insurance. It starts over the amount of your escrow being higher if it was too low and it begins again the planning, purchasing and saving for vacations, trips and birthdays that must be figured into budgets. Many details like these can bring on frustration or depression. This is the point where you're encouraged to see the glass as 'half full' not 'half empty'.
How does one do that? Stimulate your attitude toward happiness, when there is much to be depressed about?
That's the problem, right there. You can't stimulate happiness.
Happiness is a state of mind which translates into a state of being. Yes, you can stimulate the mind toward pleasure or pain...but neither of those is happiness or a lack of it. Pleasure is a temporary state that once the stimulation is absent, the consequence takes up the slack. Often we stimulate ourselves toward pleasure to escape pain, but both are temporary states. What do you feel when you are neither happy nor unhappy? If someone gives you a cupcake, does it stimulate happiness or pleasure? If someone offers you a back rub does it stimulate happiness or pleasure? Only you can know. If your state of being is calm, peaceful, kind and positive then the cupcake or the back rub are stimulants toward pleasure. If your state of being is anger, frustration, hatred, or fear then those same things can stimulate you temporarily toward pain or pleasure. After the frosting is all licked away and your back is holding up your head again...Are you happy?
This is why we get addicted to pleasure seeking activities: Food, shopping, extreme sports, tattoos, drugs, alcohol, caffeine, chocolate. Whatever it is, it doesn't bring happiness, just pleasure or pain.
My son showed me the truth about this when I asked What he felt, once the pleasure was gone. "Nothing," he said. "I'm just bored."
"Would you be more likely to help someone else with something if you had pleasure in your life?"
"No, doing work will make my pain worse and take away from my pleasure."
He's a teenager with a common understanding of what happiness is. How sad, though. The reason the world is struggling is because we are all looking for happiness and finding only temporary ways to stimulate pain or pleasure. Money, fame, facebook friends, notoriety...the list goes on and on. We disguise it as caring about others, but if we are happy, then our love, kindness, concern and goodwill for other people should be our state of being. It isn't stimulated or squashed by anyone else. It is work, to see others as we see ourselves. To care about everyone else as much as you care about yourself. To hold back our own tendency to judge because we are not responsible for our state of happiness. Instead, we are frustrated by others who don't stimulate us properly.
I promise you I have failed to conquer this ideal as well. I'm learning to let my inner state of being have more control. I believe you can be stimulated with things that bring pleasure and happiness by participating  in activities and habits that have positive consequences. However, you must seek happiness, not stimulation and its a challenge to see the difference. "I'm grateful to my son who explained it so clearly. It means that you seek true happiness instead of simply what you want. Discovering true happiness is what all of us want in the long run. Don't be afraid to feel what's inside of you once the stimulus has worn off and you're alone with your thoughts and feelings. Without stimuli, without pleasure or pain. Just you, your Father-in-Heaven and the happiness knowing Him and being loved by Him brings. Its the only happiness there is!

Begin Again...

Near the end of last year my posts began to drift off...as did I. I wrote of my experience in the hospital with the infection and bleeding, but I didn't follow up. It is rarely in my capacity to survive the health issues of my life and retain the ability to write or even talk about them while its happening. As this trauma finished, another was beginning and I've only recovered my strength and my need to write about it recently. Perhaps its because, while I was enduring it, my priorities shifted and I saw the important things in my life a new way. Perhaps because I realized that sometimes you must do the thing you can do in the moment you can do it, trusting God and love to cover the details of life.
Five weeks ago, my husband and I went to the I.V. infusion clinic to keep me from dying. I weighed 90 pounds and was hanging onto the little strength I had left when I went in. It started as a bad reaction to new medication and ended with my last fingers of hope hanging on for one more day. It is what I needed to stay alive, one more time to take care of my boys. One more time to read with my son. One more time to kiss then goodnight. One more time to wait for them to come home from school.
I awoke each morning, feeling as though I would throw up. I got them going, made them breakfast, packed their back packs and sent them off to school. Then I'd collapse. I'd throw up, lie in my bed, try to finish the publication of my book and pray...a lot.
That was back in the beginning of October and lasted until Thanksgiving. Each day I grew weaker and thinner. My friends and neighbors fed my family, took me to the doctor, literally carried me where I needed to be and I kept going. When the nausea turned to vomiting and then starvation, my husband would prop me up in the shower, tuck me into my bed when I tried to do too much and took care of the family. The last time I threw up, I'd just had IV fluids for the third time and I decided I would get them every day until we could figure out what was happening to my body. I kissed my kids that day, so grateful that I still could. I curled into my husband's warmth that night, satisfied to know I could go on, if for only one day at a time.
Never did I see things more clearly. It didn't matter. All of the goals I made for myself. The lists of jobs, tasks, busyness that I crowded my life with. None of them were important. The only things that mattered breathed just a room away from mine. The only voices that penetrated the darkness were the ones I treasured. I no longer cared how many likes I had on facebook. It wasn't important how many books were sold, essays written or words inscribed. What mattered was the people. The friends that cared and sent cards, letters, messages, acts of kindness and words of encouragement. The touch of my husbands arms as he held me. The 'goodnight mom's that I treasured and the love and peace I had from somewhere besides myself.
The Friday before Thanksgiving I awoke and it was over. The nausea, the sickness, the drain on every bodily resource I had. It was all gone.
I was thin, exhausted, still unable to eat much, but whatever it was that stole my breath that two months, disappeared. The miracle was not the absence of the ailment though, it was the presence of a new understanding.
There are two kinds of people in this world. The kind that  make a difference in a big way, either for good or ill, with large acts in front of congress, best selling works, fame and notoriety. Then there are the other kind. The kind who make a difference to the individuals who touch their lives and then touch someone else. Both kind of people change the world, just in vastly different ways. I've encounter both and I love and appreciate the goodness, kindness and giving nature of the two.I realized though,  The influence I have will extend only as far as I love, touch and serve others. I don't know what my role in this world is. I hate to diminish the capability of either because I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I can not and will not diminish the mark each of my friends, family, acquaintances, co-workers, and leaders have left on my life. I hope to love and spread the pure love of Christ in the best way I can. Because it is truly LOVE that fills our lungs, makes our hearts beat and keeps us alive.

Where Do I Belong?

It seems I found my way through this world with less confusion after I went blind. I didn't always know where I was but I always knew where I wanted to go and where I'd find 'home' if I became lost in my travels. An interesting sense of solid home structure and base filled my life when I knew with whom I belonged.
When I was a little girl my family and my home gave me that anchor for which to hold. After I married, my husband and my kids were a large part of it. When I was in my twenties, we moved 6 times within two years. The transitions were difficult, but my base was always solid with Erik and the boys. Another piece of that solitude comes from my faith. Probably even more so than the people, my love and devotion to The Savior is my solid base in the midst of storms. I've lived in hospitals, for nearly three months when I was pregnant with my first baby. For another month when I had a pancreas transplant and for 11 weeks when my youngest was born. My husband and my kids kept me sane, but my prayers, songs and quiet conversations with My Savior kept me from sinking into the darkness.
The world is filled with things that always change: Political leaders, information on the web, truth about who and what God is. It makes it difficult to find where you belong.
With a recent uproar in my life, my health and my concept of home, I've had to really think about  the details of where my place in 'the plan' consists. Where do I call home?
The answer comes to me in the same sure quiet way it always has. I'm home with my Savior...Always.
When the world, and the culture randomly changes, this one thing doesn't. I'm home and safe as long as I stay in the arms of my Creator, Redeemer and Savior.

Missed it For The World

"Have fun today buddy. Be careful." I said those words to my youngest son as he darted out the door this morning.A heaviness settled over my chest as he took off for a field trip with his class.He was dressed warm, packed a lunch, wore an extra jacket and carried plenty of water, but I dread these trips no matter what.
I don't dread field trips, its just this one...They're going to Zion National Park today.
In my heart I know that a trip to Zion will be filled with beautiful scenery, fun hikes and the chance to meet people from all over the world. Its a great trip and I should be excited. I'm not.
When I was around 14 years old, my brothers, cousins, uncle, Dad and I took a hike down the infamous Zion narrows. My Dad had done the hike before, a number of times and we'd heard the stories of repelling into pools of water, hiking through the river and the flash floods that plagued hikers in this canyon. We couldn't wait. With endless amounts of teenage energy we left to start the hike at about 5 am. One day was all we needed, my Dad assured as we began to traipse down the river. We didn't avoid getting wet, we couldn't avoid it. Why not get started?
I quickly learned the answer to that question.
After spending the better part of the day climbing in and out of the river as we hiked, I was cold, soaked, and ready to go home for a nice bath. We weren't even half way through. When we met up with another tributary named Deep Creek, it got worse. The water was bitter cold and the rocks became covered in a slick coating. You couldn't take a single step without rolling your feet and ankles as you walked. Our progress became slower and my Dad, a diabetic and heart patient, got hypothermia and started throwing up. Soon we were making no progress at all. Darkness was falling, the river was rising and a low rumble echoed down the canyon. The danger level, moderate when we left, rose to 'high' as we struggled through the water. We weren't going to make it with my Dad and we needed help.
Finally, the only hope for any of us was on my uncle's shoulders. He took the two younger boys and continued down the river while my brother, my cousin and I climbed to a jutting cliff about six feet up the canyon wall. We built a fire to warm my dad up and my cousin Michael got an emergency plastic tent out of his pack. We wrapped my dad in the covering to hold in as much body heat as we could and to protect him from the beginning of a rainstorm. We got some hot broth into him, huddled in the plastic and waited.
The rain fall grew heavier and the river continued to rise. We watched as the water level rose more than 6 feet in a few hours. The water turned dark and filthy, churning with rocks, debris and the branches of trees torn from their roots.
All night long we prayed. Prayed that our family had gotten out of the river before the water came down. Prayed our little campsite would stay above water. Prayed Dad wouldn't have a heart attack during the storm.
After a long night, we started down the river again. Cold, wet, and miserable but still alive and moving forward. After a couple of hours, Search and Rescue from the park met up with us and carried my Dad out on a stretcher. The boys and I still had to walk out though.
The crazy part is...We did it again one year later. There was less water, but just as many problems and it all ended with Search and Rescue.
Its been almost 30 years since I took those trips with my Dad. Although I have no desire to ever make them again, those memories are precious to me. It was better to have been there with him. I couldn't have just worried about him all night long, it would have driven me out of my mind. Those long hours with my Dad and my family are moments I'll never forget and wouldn't trade for anything.
Perhaps the reasons I won't go again have more to do with my general health, my missing knee cap, or my blindness, but I don't think so.
When my son left for Zion today, I didn't imagine him being washed away in a flood. A part of my heart still braves that canyon though, even all these years later. Memories I wouldn't trade or forget, but fears that will forever haunt me as well.
So, stay safe, my son, and understand, there's a whole lot more to 'Have fun and be careful." than you ever thought.

Costumed like love

A few years ago I went to the wedding reception of some good friends of mine. It was a beautiful ceremony, nice decorations and wonderful music. The members of the wedding party toasted the bride and groom and handed out sage advice for how to make the marriage last.
There were funny ones like..."You get what you get and you don't throw a fit" and "Cut up her credit card and all will be well."
There were a also more serious advice. "Love each other every day" and "never go to bed angry at one another"
My favorite and the one that has stayed with me is "True love is the way you treat your partner when you're not attracted to them."
What? You're married to someone you're not attracted to?
A shocking idea and one that rubs our sense of love and fidelity raw.
It is, however, the truth.
Over the last 18 years, my ability to be attracted to my husband is based on his voice, his personality, his good nature, sense of humor and patience. He is a man among men unlike any other.
He is also human and imperfect, even though he hides it really well.
It is harder for him though. He has seen me so sick I'm shaking and crying. He has seen me cut open from rib cage to pelvis. He watched his premature son, snatched from my womb which was cut wide open until he could see my lungs and rib cage. He's seen every manner of blood, fluid, puke, tears and pain come through my skin, my body, my scars and my heart. I've had tubes up my nose, down my throat and inserted in every vein in my body. He's held my hand, my hair when I vomited, my legs when they were swollen to twice their normal size and my body flat when I had an allergic reaction to a medication. He's seen in me, through me,  and around my misshapen and malformed body.
If attraction were necessary for us to have stayed married all these years, he'd of left me before we got married.
So often we think that attraction is love. Its not. Its just the costume love wears until the work begins.
When we go looking for the person we'll spend forever with, we look with our eyes and the first thing we find is the costume. It's said. "Men love what they're attracted to and women are attracted to what they love." The truth is Love is hard work, sacrifice, unselfishness, compromise, swallowed pride, being wrong, listening instead of hearing and letting go of being right because its an empty prize compared to being loved.
I always tell my husband that after all he's been through with me, his next wife needs to be a super model or something. He laughs, traces my healed wounds and tells me he loves my scars. They tell our story.
After all he's seen, the crazy part is he's still attracted to me too. Not the costume, the real me. Flawed, broken and imperfect because he looks at me with love, real love. Its the way he treats me, when he's not attracted. Its what makes him the love of my life.

Why Survive?

 A few weeks ago I awoke at 4 o'clock in the morning with a fever of 103 degrees. A bit extreme for most people, but for me...dangerous. I have two transplanted organs and an extremely compromised immune system. A fever of this magnitude requires a visit to the ER. My husband took me in about 6:30 where we discovered I had a raging infection. Antibiotics, rest, and a long series of medication and fluids can take care of it, but not this time. An infection turned to sepsis. Sepsis is where the infection goes into your blood stream and your entire body is basically one live bacterial circus. I got blisters on my face and hands, all of my organs were in such pain I couldn't move, but the pain was so extreme I had to move to keep it from taking over. I suffered from 'riggers' (maybe the wrong word) which is such extreme shaking from the fever that my bones rattled and I curled into a ball to try to keep any warmth. After five days of this, the fever cooled but my transplanted organs received an acute injury...damage done by the fever. After a few more days I was taken by ambulance to the transplant team to check on the organs. I felt pretty good at this point and just wanted to go home. I had a lot of blistering still and the infection wasn't dead so we decided to check on the organs. During this procedure where needles were stuck into the kidney and pancreas and sections were biopsied, I had an allergic reaction to one of the medications. My blood pressure dropped and I couldn't breathe or get my heart to beat at a normal rate. When this happened more than once, the doctors discovered I was bleeding from the biopsied sites into my abdominal cavity. I was moved to Surgical ICU, given a transfusion and pain killers before being watched for another 24 hours.
Now, if you know me, this is pretty normal for my health. When I go down, I go hard and fast. The older I get though, the more I realize the getting back up is harder and harder. I've spent the last week trying to get back on my feet and feeling like I might have been better off to have stayed in the hospital. At times like these, when recovery is long, painful and slow I wonder why I survived?
During this same period of time, a 16 year old boy in the surgical ICU next to me was brought in with a lacerated spleen. He did not survive. A car accident took the lives of a small family in the canyon and my neighbor's granddaughter, just 2 or 3, died suddenly with little or no explanation for what happened.
There were times in the hospital where I cried, begged for relief and gave my will to The Father as far as my transplanted organs were concerned.
So now I ask...Why did I survive?
I don't know the answer. My father-in-law says he stays alive because the devil won't take him and only the good die young. Perhaps its true. Its possible that I'm still trying to find my place between heaven and hell. I don't believe that though.
A part of me feels guilty because I get to stay with my boys, love my husband and fight a little longer. Part of me is grateful that the struggle is going on even though being free of this body would be easier. Most of me however, doesn't have answers.
One day we will all understand why 'The plan' is the way it is. Some day it will all make perfect sense. In the meantime, I live the best I can, I work to get better all the time, and I have faith that The Lord knows Why and for now...its enough.

Bailing Wire and Duck Tape

My two oldest boys find themselves in an interesting, and at times awkward tug-o-war. My oldest is 16, has his drivers permit and is working on his license. My fifteen year old also has his permit and is practicing the age old ritual of crossing into being all grown up, driving.
Neither of them can drive alone and their Dad won't let them drive with me. So we have two budding drivers and only one licensed adult. I drive with my boys occasionally because I'm the financially responsible party and I normally have another sighted person along for the help. Its an area of contention for my husband and I, but it helps sometimes to keep the boys both practicing and learning. God keep watch over us all.
I'm torn for the best, and most responsible way to help them when they're so close in age and are limited in their ability to be supervised. I often lose sleep and hair, worrying about what to do.
My friend, who knew me when I could see and drive, laughed at my consternation.
"You were a horrible driver when you could see," he insists. "You can't be any worse blind."
Could I?
I learned to drive, first with my older brother. If you know my older brother, you know he is brilliant, powerful, giving and an excellent father, husband and all around person. He is however,  NOT a great driver.
He drove in his early twenties, in Guatemala. He fit right into their 'take no prisoners' philosophy of speeding through intersections and around corners and break neck speeds and with various forms of livestock clinging to the doors and windows.
Later, he spent a few years in Malaysia doing the same thing, just without the livestock. He is an Indy-racer, Autobahn-wanna-be and he's fearless.
When I was 16, he took me out in our 1975 Dotson B-210 bomber. It was a conglomeration of rust, cracking vinyl, bailing wire and duck tape, but it ran.
It was also a stick shift and I had to learn to use the pedals and the shifter before I could actually drive. After grinding the gears, nearly pitching him through the windshield while I got the hang of the brake, and annoying him into driving with me, he said very little and gritted his teeth a lot.
When he and I finally got to the point that we drove, he clutched the door handle with one hand and the console with the other, praying for the both of us. He put up with me and my driving for a little while until one day a few months later.
I drove, jerkily, down a back road in the little town I'm from. Proud of myself for handling the clutch, gas and brake, all at the same time, I ignored my brothers all too obvious terror. In the little town where we lived, there were three foot wide canals running along some of the back roads. They were empty sometimes and I didn't worry about them. Unknown to me, these had the potential to be death traps. If the car were to plunge into the water, you could be drowned or washed away or both. Oblivious to this aspect of driving, I tootled down the road without a care in the world.
When the road took a sharp turn and I shifted down to decrease my speed, I forgot to steer the car, so absorbed was I in the transmission.
Now picture, My older brother and I finding ourselves hurtling toward one of these canals. He is screaming at me to stop the car. I'm in full out panic and crush the accelerator to the floor and cover my eyes with my arms.
I'm not sure how he did it, but he cranked the wheel, got my foot off the accelerator and pulled us to a dust-covered stop inches before the canal.
I don't remember what he said, how we got home or why he didn't throw me out of the car, but it was over. He never drove with me again.  I'm still surprised he used to agree to ride with me on occasion. Like I said before, he's quite the crazy driver on his own and I'm afraid some of that is my fault. All these years later though, these are some of my favorite times with him and our car. The car was just an old tin can of a thing, but I loved her, drove her into the ground and eventually turned her over to my younger brothers and sisters. Not before I crashed her a few times and used a lot more bailing wire and duck tape to keep her together.
My Dad eventually taught me how to drive and my time in New York honed, or exacerbated my skills, but I'll never forget that little car.
She was ugly, unsafe, and always on the brink of falling apart, but then so was I when I was 16.
My boys fight over and drive our old clunky Saturn and grit their teeth when they have to share. Trust me boys...It's the best time you'll ever have.