Some horrible things happen in this world, and sometimes there is no one to blame them on- and NO way to forget them. Karen's moment lives here. An experience to share with a shrink that reminds each of us about frailty and moments that can change our lives forever. Thank God it wasn't you.
Transition Play
By James J. Marry
Sometimes a woman has to take chances. Karen didn’t know much about experimental airplanes. She knew that they scared her to death and that her seventeen year old son, Stephen, loved them dearly. Today would be his first solo flight for his license. Stephen’s father, Wayne, was going with him.
Traffic was quiet on US Highway 19 this Saturday morning. Karen’s family had moved to Holiday, Florida four years earlier when Wayne retired from the fire department. Karen had retired from teaching. They had both put in twenty years to live the good life while they were still young.
Wayne and Stephen were unaware that Karen would be there to the solo flight. They would have both been shocked. Stephen had fallen in love with the ultra-light aircraft. The mere mention of them made Karen turn white like a ghost.
Karen wished that she could have had more children. It wasn’t to be. So she and Wayne had resigned all of their love to Stephen. He was a great kid. It was scary for Karen to picture him flying, but the boy had earned the right. Karen would still smile to think of Stephen looking forward to this day. She knew that memory would always be priceless for her.
Stephen had been thirteen years old when they moved. His heart was broken to leave his friends and school up north. Selling the Danbury home, Karen and Wayne had managed to tuck away a decent nest egg and increase their standard of living in Florida. Stephen was initially unimpressed though.
He moped around the house for months, in fact.
Once settled, Wayne was able to devote his attention to his teenage son. Wayne had little time during Stephen’s younger years due to the requirements of his job. He dove into his availability to Stephen with a fervor and Karen was very pleased to watch as her son and husband became best friends.
Karen and Wayne had worked very hard through Stephen’s childhood, but especially Wayne. Karen’s husband knew that his overtime with the fire department improved his family’s welfare greatly. The department rewarded him with a stronger pension for his additional service.
Karen was a teacher and filled in for her dedicated husband. She volunteered a second career in time to her son’s soccer. Stephen had loved the sport from his first kick. His five-year-old photograph from the Danbury Pee Wee Soccer Association would remain attached to her key ring until the day that she died.
Her men increased their bond through Stephen’s soccer. This was no simple task for a mother to orchestrate. Wayne had grown up with football and had virtually no understanding of the European sport. That changed quickly, once Karen began to drag him to Stephen’s games. Wayne acquired the rules of the game and his son’s ambition for it in record time.
Stephen was a gifted goalie according to his high school coach. Stephen had learned his skill from Karen during what she lovingly called his “gangly years”. Karen was his coach from age 5 to 11. A matured player who was already receiving attention from local colleges initiated Wayne to the game- his son.
But Karen passed the baton on to her husband very willingly. She enjoyed seeing Wayne thrive upon her son’s ability and skill. Karen had redirected her attentions to the younger children. She could see a little of Stephen in the way they all crowded around the ball wildly swinging their soccer boots in the hope that they could connect with the dangerously large ball instead of another player’s shin guards. They were so cute at that age.
Karen remembered her baby boy’s first games. He was so free. He smiled from ear to ear running with the pack and kicking at the white and black ball. Her boy was so beautiful.
Karen had told Wayne and Stephen a fib that morning. She’d let them believe that she was officiating for a game at the local Junior High School. Karen was going to surprise her men by showing up at the airfield to watch Stephen take his solo flight. He would be thrilled to see his mother. She just knew it. Wayne would be pleased also. No wonder that Karen had not been paying a lot of attention that morning. It wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Karen’s baby boy would be driving the 1997 Mercury Cougar that he had received on his seventeenth birthday to the field that morning. The three of them had chosen the vehicle for safety, dependability and –yes- because Karen thought it looked “cool”. Stephen had asked her not to say that when his friends around and Wayne had made her promise.
The best friends bonded around the black and gray automobile also. They washed, waxed and leather treated the car on a regular basis. Karen’s new Pathfinder should look that good. Karen could imagine the smile on her wonderful husband’s face while he was sitting in the passenger seat looking at his son. Her heart fluttered when she recognized the vehicle in front of her on the road.
Sure enough, Karen was going to ruin the surprise with her fast driving. Stephen was directly in front of her on the highway and Wayne was sitting right next to him. She quickly thought to try and slow down before the two of them noticed her, but the world was not going to turn that way this Saturday morning.
In the next instant, before Karen could even take her foot off of the Pathfinder’s gas pedal, her horror maximized.
Traffic was light on this particular morning for Highway 19. Usually, that would be a good thing. For Karen’s men, that was a very bad thing.
Karen had caught up with her men because, as usual, they were doing the speed limit in the center lane heading north. Karen, the family speed demon, had caught up with them from behind and had the perfect viewpoint for the next four seconds of eternity.
Highway 19 in the state of Florida has a motto. “Pray For Me, I Drive On US 19”. Many other highways have adopted this expression. This stretch of the killer has three lanes going north and south, with each direction owning a turning lane and an exit lane on most intersections. Each lane even had its own traffic light at this point in the road. The balls ahead were green. Karen remembered.
Karen would never forget.
She had heard it said before that the world slowed down when things like this took place. Hogwash. Everything was over in a moment. The terror of the moment just replayed itself over and over again so that every nuance of the moment was that much clearer to her.
Karen had seen the new red pickup instinctively. Her mind’s eye had turned her head because the truck had turned a few degrees off of the path that Karen’s intellect deemed was safe. Karen was trailing her men by about fifteen yards. When she caught up with what she was seeing, Karen stopped breathing. The red pickup was pointing into the northbound traffic.
Instinct was charged again by her vision. Karen began to brake the Nissan Pathfinder. The SUV responded as it should have. Alarms went off in her head when she recognized that Stephen’s brake lights did not come on
US Highway 19 north is separated from its southbound sister by a median. The island has a modestly sloped curb parted by nearly 14 feet of concrete. The red truck used the curb as a ramp and flew over the concrete to land nearly three feet on the other side. It bounced more so than it landed.
The truck bounced head first and headlights to headlights into Stephen and Wayne in the Cougar. Karen passed on the left as the explosion of metal and plastic caused by forty miles an hour plus occurred in her passenger window. She could recall turning her head right as she applied pressure to the brakes. Her vehicle stopped only 12 yards ahead of the monstrous crescendo that was then behind her.
Karen remembered now that she had sat in the Pathfinder with her head on the steering wheel until she felt the hand upon her shoulder.
“Ma’am … are you hurt?”
Karen wanted to remember that she had been lucky to survive the wreck. But, how?
She knew that her only child… her baby boy… was gone. No soccer scholarship for Momma to be proud of. No grandchildren. No shoulder to cry on.
Wayne was gone also. Karen knew it. She couldn’t press her eyes any tighter closed. None of it would go away. And the only string that connected to the real world was a question. With all of the terrible answers that awaited the woman who had just stopped being a mother and a wife- there was a question.
“Ma’am … are you hurt?”
Karen took her next breath.
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Reviewed by Stephen Rama
9/7/2003
Beautiful story, only I wouldn't be caught dead driving in a Mercury Cougar...Heh, heh.
Reviewed by Phyllis Du'Gas
9/9/2001
I was glued! This is great stuff. Simple flowing structure. Easy read.
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