This last post of the day will be a little self indulgent, so pardon me if it is not what you usually expect here at IM.
This morning my daughter left the house at around 8:30 to get to her job downtown. We were kind of goofing around as she left and I was giving her a hard time for leaving her laundry blocking the laundry room door and then acting surprised that I did it for her. (She KNOWS I cannot stand to see dirty laundry cluttering up my house.)
About ten or twelve minutes after she left my phone rings. I see by the caller ID that it is her and I answer.
"Hello, did you forget something?
There is a pause. "Hi Dad." Her voice sounds a little shaky to me.
"Hi?" Another pause. This starts to worry me so I decide to speak first.
"Honey? Something wrong?"
"I just saw a car flip over on the highway."
"What?" And then I go straight into parent mode. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I am just standing on the side of the road with two pregnant women and I think one of them is going into labor."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Yeah there were two pregnant women in the truck that flipped over and I am standing with them until the ambulance gets here."
"On the highway?" The word "ambulance" kick-starts my pre-programmed parental responses again and so I ask "Are you sure YOU are alright?"
"Oh yeah everybody's fine."
"Okay can you tell me EXACTLY what happened?"
"Well, I was driving down the New Seward highway and somebody in the lane to my left suddenly slammed on their brakes, and the truck behind them could not stop in time and careened off onto a snow berm and flipped over on its roof."
"Is anybody hurt?"
"No, no everybody's fine. I pulled the two women out of the truck window, and the driver, a guy, got out on his own."
"Wait, what? YOU pulled the women out of the truck?" In my mind I am envisioning my five foot four daughter dashing across lanes of oncoming traffic to pry two pregnant women out of an upside down truck, and my stress level starts to rise.
"Yeah, don't worry it wasn't on fire or anything." (Well great, THAT possibility had not even occurred to me yet!)
"What the hell. Didn't anybody else stop to help?"
"Just one other person stopped. What is wrong with people that they can drive off and leave a truck upside down in the snow? I wasn't sure if anybody else called so I called 911. Only the lady on the other end kept telling me to calm down. I thought I was calm, so I asked her 'don't I sound calm?' Apparently I didn't."
"Well honey, the 911 operator would probably be an expert on whether you were calm or not, so I would take her word for it. Are you feeling better now? Or is your heart racing a mile a minute?"
"Yep, it's still racing, but I don't feel upset. Just pissed off that nobody else stopped to help."
"So the only people to stop were you and one other person?"
"Yes, this other woman stopped too. There were dozens of cars that saw this happen but they just drove away."
"But not you."
"No, not me. And I know you wouldn't have driven away either, would you?"
"No, of course I wouldn't."
"Well there you go then. You did not raise me to drive away from people in need either."
"No I didn't."
"Okay Dad, I have to go now. The ambulance is pulling up and I need to talk to them, and then I need to get to work. Bye, I love you."
"I love you t....." Right about then the line went dead.
As I write this she is still at work, and will be until late tonight, so I have not had the chance to find out anymore details, or to see how the rest of her day went. But I will later.
You know when you are looking at that mischievous little girl, and she is looking back at you with those big beautiful eyes, you cannot help but wonder what kind of a person she will grow up to be.
Today I got that answer. And I could not have hoped for a better one.
Daddy's proud of you sweetheart.
But of course you already know that. Don't you?
