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After X-rays showed no broken bones, I stopped for some takeout food and pulled onto the highway, worrying about the afternoon's appointments. I passed a carton of milk back to my son strapped in his baby seat directly behind me.
"Oooh, Mommy, I spilled it." My left hand tightened on the wheel as I tried to concentrate on the road while handing him a couple of napkins with my right hand. Then I gave him some chicken, not seeing the abandoned truck on the roadside. Suddenly the world exploded into a roar of tearing metal. Then stillness.
My car had turned 180 degrees and stopped. I was looking through a cracked windshield at three lanes of oncoming traffic. The right front corner of the car was gone.
Though I hurt all over and my mouth was full of blood, I unfastened my seat belt, jumped from the car and got my son. He was conscious and shocked. "Mommy ..." he said softly. I grabbed him and rushed up the bank, where I clung to him, looking at the wreck that had been our family car.
We were lucky. We came away with our lives. We would be around tomorrow.
That evening my pediatrician called to inquire about my son's leg. When I recounted the accident and my stupidity in tending a child at 50 miles an hour, she told me of another mother who had done the same last winter. For her and two of her three children, there was no tomorrow.