Karen Sandler

Tag: mom

  • Near Death, Divine Providence, and Mining the Past

    Ford Fairlane 1964
    photo credit: DSC03226 via photopin (license)

    When I was 12 years old, I nearly died.

    At the time, my two older sisters and I lived with our mom in the San Bernardino Mountains, about 2 hours east of Los Angeles. It was Easter Sunday, and we’d gone to visit my grandmother in L.A. for Spring Break. Grandma and Papa had dropped us off at the bus station in downtown L.A., and Mom came to pick us up at the bus depot in San Bernardino.

    Mom 1970sMy mom, God love her, was a terrible driver. She was a lead-foot, not only on the gas, but on the brake as well. She drove “down the hill” (from nearly mile-high Blue Jay to San Berdoo’s thousand foot elevation) screaming around those mountain curves, most likely with her foot on the brake most of the way.

    She picked us up at the bus depot, me and my sisters still wearing our Easter dresses. We tucked our luggage and our basket of Easter eggs in the trunk, then Mom headed back up the hill. My older sister Debbie sat in the middle of the car’s bench front seat next to Mom, and I sat next to Debbie by the door. Our oldest sister, Linda, sat behind me in the back seat.

    Mom might have used less brake going up, but the brake drum nevertheless got hotter and hotter until about halfway up the hill, the heat actually blew a tire. We pulled into a nice, level turnout and a kind passerby changed the tire for us. The gentleman told my mom she better let the brakes cool before continuing on home. We sat around for what Mom thought was long enough, then pulled out again.

    Stier Sisters Late 50s
    Me, Debbie, & Linda celebrating Linda’s birthday with a Barbie doll cake.

    I don’t remember if there was a smell, or Mom could feel the heat through the brake pedal. In any case, she decided to pull over into another turnout and let the brakes cool again.

    Except this turnout was sloped. The car started rolling backwards. The brakes were well and truly fried and no amount of stomping on Mom’s part would get that car to stop. The car just kept rolling toward the edge where the mountainside plunged down a couple hundred feet of steep embankment.

    For some reason, Mom didn’t think to try the emergency brake. I suppose it might not have worked anyway. She was struggling to put the car into park. When that didn’t work, she jumped out and tried to stop the car with her body. The car knocked her down and partially rolled over her. Not with its full weight because at that point, the rear of the car was already over the edge, so the front end was partially off the ground.

    While Mom was fighting to stop the car, Debbie had gotten the passenger side door open and was yelling at me to get out. I remember sitting sideways, my feet hanging out of the car, watching the pavement roll by under my feet. But I was frozen. Debbie couldn’t get me to budge. All the while, Linda kept yelling from the back seat, “I can’t open the door! I can’t open the door!”

    We were all about to die. And then a miracle happened.

    The car stopped. Linda got her door open, I finally scrambled out of the car with Debbie close on my heels. When we turned back to the car, we realized it had stopped with one front tire hooked to the berm that edged the turnout. That berm wasn’t even a foot high.

    Mom was banged up but nothing was broken or needed stitches. We three girls were perfectly fine. The car was towed out of its predicament, and it went on to suffer through more of my mom’s abuse. The Easter eggs ended up rotting in the trunk because we all forgot they were in there, a fact that we girls chortled over for years to come.

    Yeah. A miracle. That my mom wasn’t hurt more badly. That we girls didn’t flip right over the edge, none of us seat-belted into that pre-airbag car. That Debbie and I didn’t bail, and the car didn’t flip with Linda trapped inside. All those possibilities make me shudder now.

    Oddly enough, as dramatic as this experience was, I’ve never used it in a book. I’ve probably used the fear, the panic, the horror of it without consciously realizing where I might be pulling it from. It became a story that we all found hysterically funny because it did have a happy ending.

    In this case, reality was much better than the what-ifs. Thanks to God and miracles.

  • Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide

    hp photosmart 720
    L-R, my mom, Barbara, and my grandma, Pauline.

    January 16th would have been my mom’s 83rd birthday, so my sisters and I were sharing memories of her that day. My mom was a hoot–wacky, creative, and with a great sense of humor. She’s the one who invented our imaginary family friend, Henry, and she introduced all of us to the Tilly Williams Club.

    But a common thread in my and my sisters’ reminiscences was Mom’s oft-repeated advice: Let your conscience be your guide.

    We all admitted that when Mom said that, we’d always feel a tug of guilt inside. Probably because she knew that we knew what the right decision was to make, even though we really wanted to choose the wrong (easier) path. Mom didn’t judge us for that desire to make things soft for ourselves. “Let your conscience be your guide” was just her way of reminding us to make the moral choice rather than the convenient or self-indulgent choice.

    Grandma's Yearbook InscriptionWhile I was mulling over my memories of Mom, I happened to pick up my old high school yearbook. To my surprise, I found an inscription from my grandmother. I had no memory of her writing in my yearbook. It’s great advice, and such a precious gift to have it written in her own hand.

    So many people are generous with advice whether we want it or not. But when counsel comes from someone who we know loves us and wants the best for us, it’s good to pay attention and give it more weight.

    What good advice have you gotten over the years, either from your parents/grandparents or friends? Feel free to share in the comments.

  • Temptation: 1, Me: 0

    Generally speaking, I should not stop for yard sales. If I do, there’s a .999 probability that I will spend money. Usually it will be some small knickknack that only costs a couple dollars. But sometimes (like today), it requires pulling out my mad money to lay down some semi-serious cash.

    I could blame it on my husband. I certainly blamed him that time I was admiring a kitten at an adoption clinic and begged him to let me take her home. We already had three cats, and I counted on him to tell me, in a reasonable tone of voice, “No, Karen, we already have enough cats.” He did not. Instead, he said, “Sure, let’s adopt her.”

    Cosette turned out to be a wonderful cat who spent most of her waking hours snuggled up to me. Sadly, a heart condition cut short her life at a young age.

    In any case, you can see that my husband is supposed to be the safety brake to my acquisitive nature. So when we stopped at a yard sale to check out a dining room set (we actually do need a dining room set), I counted on him to temper my temptations. But I’d already seen the school desk/chair when we were scanning the offerings from our car. Close up, I liked it even more. It turned out the price was kind of reasonable and when I made an offer, the counter was exactly what I’d expected and was willing to pay.

    So, I said, “I want this.” Hubby’s response…crickets. Other than opining that he had no idea where in the house we would put it (I said I’d jam it into my office if I had to), he just let me go on my merry way.

    I did pay for it with my aforementioned “mad money,” cash I receive from book sales that I happened to have tucked away. So the purchase didn’t impact our household finances at all. But hubby didn’t exactly live up to his side of the bargain by saving me from myself.

    But why did I want it, from the moment I spotted it at the yard sale? Because (A) I love old furniture. I love that it’s made from solid wood, that it’s well put together. It’s something I inherited from my dad, I guess. He loved to work with his hands and was an amazing woodworker. (B) I’ve always thought purpose-built furniture is particularly cool. The fact that this is a combo desk-chair is so neat. (C) I love its connection with the past. As I was carrying it into the house, it occurred to me that my mom likely sat at a desk just like it when she was in school in the 30s and 40s.

    There’s a divot carved out of the desktop and I can imagine a restless boy like my father carefully drilling out that hole with his pen knife to while away the slow moving hours in the classroom. There’s a big X scrawled across the desk top too, maybe made by some frustrated student who just had enough of the times tables when a beautiful spring day awaited him or her just outside the schoolhouse windows.

    What am I going to do with this desk-chair? No idea. For now, I piled a few of my granddaughter’s books in the storage area under the seat. She’s a toddler and a little too small to use the chair, but I bet she’ll be intrigued by it next time she comes over.

    And maybe I’ll just sit in the chair myself, write out a few times tables and think about the students who once used it. Girls like my mom, who won a contest in high school with the slogan “Don’t be square, the cafeteria’s not the place to brush your hair.” And boys like my dad, who would sit in old stuffy classrooms dreaming about how he would have much rather be running in an open field with a kite, or riding his bike to the ocean.