THE WRECK
Collision and Memory

Laura Lehman Amstutz

For my mother it will always be a Wreck, not an accident or a collision, but The Wreck, destructive, terrifying, something from which you never quite recover. The rest of us don’t see it this way. It was just a thing that happened. An event, quite different from a Wreck, but it still shapes our lives.

This year January 13 was a Monday. On that day I left home for college early in the morning, when my mother warned me to drive carefully (not an uncommon experience) but I was momentarily confused when she added, "It’s January 13."

For a moment my mind jumped to the "Friday the thirteenth" warning. I said, without thinking, "But it’s Monday; I’ll be fine."

My mother looked confused (more confused than the early morning, pre-coffee hour called for) and I remembered why January 13 was important.

The original January 13 was a Sunday in 1983. We were leaving church and on our way to pick up a Sunday paper before the pious members of my community would make someone work on a Sunday to deliver it. A truck missed the stop sign. Such a simple act, but suddenly the Jaws of Life were cutting us out of the car and the paramedics were rushing us to the hospital. We had a memory and story.

It’s a short story; even with the details the story would only take a minute or two to tell. When people ask about the scar on my face I give them the five-second version: "My family was in a car accident when I was little." But the story is more than 11 words. It has lived on in our memories, even when we don’t talk about it, even when we don’t think about.

My mother probably thinks about it the most. Admittedly, she is a bit obsessed with the date. She usually gets sick around that time of year, suffers from what she calls PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. I always thought it was just Seasonal Affective Disorder, a likely guess, since we live in Ohio, where the sun shines for a total of 10 minutes in January. I don’t share her obsession and have almost no memory of the Wreck. It took almost 22 years for me to recognize the real reason my mother hates winter.

Although the rest of my family doesn’t appear to be bothered by the date or the event, fragments of it still rise to the surface, like the glass in my brother’s hand.

My father took pictures of everyone’s injuries for insurance purposes. He sustained the least amount of injury, despite being the only person not wearing a seatbelt. When I turned 18, he finally showed me the photos of my injured, bruised family. We looked like crime victims from television, except we were still alive. The only thing my father says, beyond the pictures, is that the worst part was hearing me cry in the emergency room and being unable to comfort me. He keeps the insurance file in his alphabetical filing cabinet. I wonder if it’s filed under W for Wreck, or H for Helpless.

My brother is similarly silent about the Wreck, at least on most occasions. Once, a few years ago, he called my mother in a panic. He said he’d just seen a terrible car accident with a car that looked just like Dad’s. He watched them pry it open with the Jaws of Life. He called to make sure everyone was okay.

My mother and brother broke seven bones each. My brother had a pin in his leg and was in traction for several months. He claims his one act of selfless brotherly love was in those moments when the truck hit our car. He threw himself across the car on top of me to protect me from flying glass. It makes me wish I remembered it.

My mother was in the hospital for three weeks afterward. I remember this only because when I got home from my short stay in the hospital there were Oreos in the bread drawer, a snack my mother would never allow. There are pictures of her in a wheelchair, but I don’t remember that either.

For some reason, all my post-accident memories have to do with food, but I was only two years old, so I suppose food was memorable. I remember the red Jello in a red wagon in the children’s wing of the hospital, and I remember the Oreos and the pink cake we served in the hospital next to my brother’s bed for my birthday. My parents say that some day it may all come flooding back, but I think I’ll keep my food memories for now.

When I think of all the ways we live differently because of the Wreck, it is astounding. I am now in the habit of putting on my seatbelt, every time I get in the car; even when we’re just driving down the block, even if I’m just moving my car in a parking lot. Usually I don’t think about it, but when I don’t do it, it feels wrong.

We now live a half mile from where the accident happened. We drive through the intersection daily. I always stop and look both ways longer than necessary. My husband’s grandmother used to live at that intersection. She was the first to reach the scene when we wrecked. Really, our lives have changed in ways that we can’t even name.

"Muscles have memory," says my mother when she gets a massage to ease her muscles, which still ache from the injuries. But I want to add that people have memory, carry stories, and live. I wonder what it means that we tell this odd, terrible story, with so many disparate details. What does this story tell about us? It tells us of our obsessions and fears, our desire to protect one another and the knowledge that we can’t, it tells us of love and action and most of all it tells us about life.

—Laura Lehman Amstutz from Kidron, Ohio, has recently graduated from Bluffton College with a B.A. in Communication and a minor in writing. She is married to Brandon Amstutz and living in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she is pursuing an M.Div. from Eastern Mennonite Seminary.