When I was five or six, I was in a car accident. I am sure of my age at the time because I clearly remember the wide street with stoplights that we took to go the elementary school in Milwaukee that I attended for kindergarten, first and second grade. It was winter and my mother was driving me to the parking lot behind the school to leave me close to the entrance. It was winter and the roads were shiny with exhaust and glinted in the sunlight at the intersection. A woman coming the opposite direction failed to see our gold Oldsmobile and turned into the intersection as my mother drove through the green light. It was the 70s, no one wore seatbelts and I had sat in the front seat on the short drive to the school. I hit my nose on the dashboard of the car and was carried to the gas station there at the intersection. I remember crying and crying and seeing the older woman with white hair, who had rammed our vehicle that morning. She peered closely at my face. I never understood why she wanted to see me up close like that. I could barely discern her face from the tears blurring my vision. My mother and I were taken to the hospital where my father met us. I watched my mother taken away on a metal gurney bed, down a long hospital corridor. I asked my father if she was going to die. She must have gone to do Xrays. My mother had always looked fragile but was not the type of person who worries needlessly. She returned in a wheelchair for precaution. I do not remember my father’s response but have always remembered the first time I wondered about my parents’ mortality.