Story 1: The Crash

“Get your fat ass up the stairs”, he says behind me, and he smacks the pudge on my butt with a slicing slap, like a farm cow. My face heats beet red instantly.

My head snaps to the right, “I hate you,” I snarl at him. “I hate you so much,” I whisper to myself.

“Oh pooder, I’m just kidding,” he says. “You know I love your fat ass.”

For four years, he’s called me names like fat-ass, dumb-ass, ugly-ass; when I revolted or cried or struck back with a verbal assault on his… never mind.

Don’t sink to his level, don’t do it; rise above the fray.

He always says the same thing: “Oh, I’m just kidding pooder, you know I’m just kidding, right?”

No, he’s not kidding. He says these things because he knows how much they hurt. He even talked to me like that before we got married.  I thought, “Oh, he’ll change,” or, “I’ll talk to him about it and it will get better.” 

Stupid girl thoughts.

But there I was, living in a yellow cottage on five acres in Unionville, Maryland. Population: 200. We moved in during spring 1978, while I was pregnant with my first child, my son Alan Lamb. I gave birth to him—a big, bouncy boy, over 10 pounds—via vertical c-section on June 30, 1978. What a gorgeous chunk of baby boy! And he's still a gorgeous chunk!

Seven weeks after my son was born, in mid-August 1978, I returned to my OB doctor for my postpartum checkup. 

“Guess who’s pregnant?” my doctor asked me. I think he was trying to distract me as he plucked the staples from my abdomen. It hurt like hell.

“Oh, Wanda? Is Wanda pregnant?” I sputtered.

“No,” he said.

“Mary Beth? I know she wants another baby.” I said.

“No,” he said.

“I dunno, who?” I asked.

“YOU are!” he said, and I laughed.

“That’s very funny Dr. Harris. Remember me? I just HAD a baby!” I exclaimed.“A big one!”

“Well, you’re going to have another one,” he said firmly. “And it will also be a cesarean delivery because your cervix is the size of a small pea.” 

Was he joking?

“If you have any more, we’ll install a zipper,” he said, slightly grinning, and then added, “or you could die from it.”

I stopped laughing.

“You’ll probably have this next baby sometime in May,” he said before walking out. 

After he left, I lay there, stunned, scared, and struggling to come to terms with this news. I stared up at the tiny holes in the ceiling tiles, trying to adjust.

I loved my home. I adored my son. And I always wanted to have two children. But my marriage devoured almost every strand of self-confidence I ever had.  I felt trapped, not by my children, but by wondering how much longer I could bear the verbal and emotional abuse. 

Just then, the nurse entered, swabbed my 7-inch slice, and helped me sit up. “Can I have a tissue please?” I asked her. I didn't know I had been crying until I felt the wetness of my tears sliding down into the crevices of my earlobes. The nurse patted me on my shoulder and said “It will all work out, dear”, and she walked out. 

Oh yes, that was so comforting.

I left the doctor’s office angry at friends who said, "You can’t get pregnant if you breastfeed," and at myself for believing them. Why didn’t I know?

May 23rd, 1979, was Laura's birth day, and just like that, I had my darling Irish twins: two infants, eleven months apart, my son Alan, and now my beautiful new baby girl, Laura. I adored my mother-in-law, and her middle name was Laura. 

I changed their diapers at the same time, bathed them, rocked them, and occasionally, I even breastfed them both at the same time. This was incredibly bonding and so special. Some days though, I honestly did feel like a farm cow. Moo!

Crash Day, November 10, 1979

“I’m going to get my hair cut,” he told me. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Take your time. I’m going to the store for groceries. I’m taking Laura with me, and Alan is staying with the Cooks till I get back,” I told him.

“Why don’t you take Alan with you?” he asked.

“Because the boy will not stay in a car seat; he hates being confined. Plus, grocery shopping with a 5-month-old and a 15-month-old is tough,” I told him.

“Then why don’t you leave both of them with the Cooks and hurry up back because I’ll be hungry by then,” he told me.

“Because Laura is so sweet and she doesn’t fuss much, and what’s it to you? Other than its wrong, like everything else I do,” I snarked.

He stomped out of our sun porch, slammed the screen door, and drove off for Mt. Airy in the blue V-Dub.

I began packing. First, the diaper bag, then my coupons and my purse, then I went outside and started loading the car seat in our yellow V-Dub. ‘Oh, what the hell,’ I thought. ‘Might as well take the truck. I could use the room.’

I removed the car seat from the V-Dub and buckled it in the bench seat of the truck. Then I grabbed my purse, the diaper bag, Laura, and Alan, and loaded everything into our brand-new, firetruck-orange Ford F-150 pickup truck.  I drove across the street, dropped off my son, and headed west down Rt. 26 to the A&P in Frederick.

It was cold and drizzling outside, but Laura and I were toasty in our shiny new truck. It was great! I was smiling and cooing and talking to Laura as I drove through the tall hills of Mt. Pleasant’s horse country. A few dappled horses draped in thick blankets were grazing near the edge of the road, just behind the fence. 

Laura saw them. She was watching them. I reached over Laura’s car seat and lightly tapped the top of her itty-bitty baby fingers with my index finger.

“Hey, Laura, guess what?" I said, getting her attention. "You already have those long, gorgeous legs, just like your Daddy, and when you grow up, you’re gonna look great on a horse!" She was listening to me, she smiled, then wrapped her tiny baby fingers around my thumb.

“Or how about a ballerina?” I asked her, and I gently jiggled her left foot. “You could be a ballerina, too!” I said. She smiled again, only bigger this time, and she waved her little balled-up fingers in the air, kicking her chunky legs and feet up and down. I think she liked the idea of riding a horse!

That’s when I noticed the car way down at the bottom of the hill, in my lane. Someone’s picking up dropped candy, I thought, as the car swerved back into its own lane. 

But wait, it's back in my lane, closer now. 

No shoulder. 

Nowhere to turn. Go back! 

GO BACK! Oh GOD, he’s slumped over the wheel. 

Where can I go? Rock! Rock! Nowhere to—

a movie: 

Larry Denn, prom - Brian -Westfield drive-in. Key West -  campmobile - Wattsburg Fair Grammy Bush, Mallare's picnic penny pile, Mrs. Gooch, Alan, my pants wet? ALAN, SONNN!!!!

EXPLOSION

TRAPPED in a blender of ripping metal and glass shards.

then black.

Someone reached in and lifted me out. Then Chlorox white. For a while.

I went through the windshield twice, ripped up my face, impaled the steering wheel into the dashboard with my arms, and broke about a dozen bones; I got off easy.

The force of a 125 mph head-on collision shot Laura out of her car seat, flipping her upside down, and smashing the back of her neck against the rigid dashboard of the truck, crushing and dragging the vertebrae of her spine across the top of her spinal column at the C-4, C-5, and C-6 levels.

Laura was five months old that day, and that was the last day Laura moved anything or felt anything, from the bottom of her neck to the tips of her toes.

There's much more. I can’t bear it right now. I can't do this all at once. I’m PTSD-ing it to the bar.

OK It's another day. I’m back. onward.

Laura spent six months in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore before she could come home to Unionville. Eventually, slowly, Laura regained limited movement of her right arm down to her wrist, but her hand and fingers were still paralyzed, we're still still, and she felt nothing.

No matter. When Laura was two, she received a custom-built electric wheelchair from Kennedy-Krieger Institute, and within minutes, she figured out how to maneuver her wrist just enough to push that joystick forward and ZOOM! She was hell on wheels! I am forever grateful for that.

Laura was smart, intuitive, and had a crazy sense of humor. She did terrific Nixon impressions, furrowing her brow, covering her trach, and shaking her head side to side and saying "I am not a crook, Mommy”.Laura loved to sing, too! She would belt out Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie, our love!" every time it played on the radio.

Laura had no traumatic brain injury. She attended Battle Monument School in Dundalk every day, accompanied by Miss Rena, one of Laura’s favorite nurses.

There were many other angel nurses to care for her daily critical needs, such as: chest PT, suctioning lung mucous, proper nutrition, temperature control, diapering, ambu bag compressions, bracework and wheelchair adjustments and more, all to ensure her minute-by-minute survival and safety.

Laura did really well academically in school, too! She studied and passed at grade level and in certain subjects, she excelled past her grade level. But that’s a credit to the staff at Battle Monument. Earth angels, every one of them.

Laura Gets Expelled

“Hello Miss Lamb,” It was Mrs. King, the principal of Battle Monument, calling me again.

“Hi, did Laura have another seizure? Did she break another bone?” I asked, as these were the usual reasons for the principal's phone calls.

“I’m afraid we need to expel Laura from school for a while,” she told me. I started to laugh! I thought she was joking with me! What can a quadriplegic child do that’s bad enough to warrant school expulsion? But Mrs. King wasn’t joking.

“Laura ran over a little boy with her wheelchair today,” she continued.

“Nuh-uh,” I half giggled, still not believing her.

“You’ll need to come and get her, please,” Mrs. King commanded.

Whoa, I thought, this is serious, so off I went to fetch my little criminal.

When I walked into the office, Laura was in a corner, crying her eyes out. Mind you, to hear Laura cry or say anything, she had to cover her tracheostomy opening with her wrist, which she was certainly doing this day. Her pitiful sobbing sounds were so hurtful to me. I couldn’t stand it. But this was no joking matter.

I walked to the corner, turned her chair around, and asked, “Laura, is this true?”

“Yeeeess” she stuttered.

“Why would you do such a thing?” I asked her sternly.

“He called me the b-word Mommy," she sniveled. “You said it's a bad worrr-d.”

At this point, I had to turn my head and walk away to hide my laughter from her, and from the principal too!

“Is the little boy OK?” I asked the principal.

“Yes, apparently Laura hit him hard enough to knock him down, but he's physically OK, just shaken up.”

Good, I thought. 

Good that he’s OK, and good that he won’t be calling my little girl a bitch anymore.