cc<\/a><\/p><\/div>\nThe mangled front of the family Chrysler scowled at me as though the accident were my fault.<\/p>\n
My thoughts jumbled. I\u2019d miss swim practice. Even with insurance, accidents cost a lot. Maybe I wouldn\u2019t be competing for a long time. I shivered, wishing I were swimming a 500 in the toasty pool instead of watching a policeman hike toward me.<\/p>\n
I told him my version of the accident. But how could a sixteen-year-old kid\u2019s word with a worn out Chrysler possibly win over a guy whose pant creases I could see from across the street?<\/p>\n
The officer asked if I\u2019d had my lights on.<\/p>\n
Of course. Who drove in the rain without them? I was a good little Brownie, always doing what I was taught\u2014like turning off the lights whenever I got out of the car.<\/p>\n
Too bad I couldn\u2019t shove my Brownie-ness in the same direction as Dad\u2019s compass needle.<\/p>\n
But something essential\u2014intellect or self-will or whatever it was that made me Ann\u2014refused to die. I\u2019d never be Dad\u2019s mini-me.<\/p>\n
By spring our Duster\u2019s wrinkles had been worked out and mostly paid for by insurance.<\/p>\n
I sat in a Daytona Beach courtroom, jiggling my knee, waiting to tell the judge my version of the accident.<\/p>\n
Three hot college boys lined up single file in front of the podium. Each had been arrested for indecent exposure when he got drunk and urinated off a hotel balcony during Spring Break.<\/p>\n
Photo by hotblack<\/p><\/div>\n
My shoulders relaxed and I hid a grin behind my hand.<\/p>\n
After the three-piece-suited Porsche driver told his tale\u2014I repeated what I\u2019d said to the policeman.<\/p>\n
The judge thanked me and decided the Porsche driver had been at fault.<\/p>\n
A couple days after my accident Dad had stowed his teepee. He stood on our front stoop, leveled his gaze on me, and declared, \u201cYou hate me, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n
The serrated steel of Dad\u2019s words plowed through the doors and windows of my person.<\/p>\n
Maybe I didn\u2019t like<\/em> Dad, but I loved him. I wasn\u2019t mean to him, but he must have picked up on my dread of spending time with him.<\/p>\nOld hurts crunched with new ones in a pileup I couldn\u2019t separate into then and now. This second crash in a few days came four years after the mashup of Mom and Dad\u2019s marriage.<\/p>\n
He got on his bike and pedaled for Miami, our wreckage strewn across the lawn.<\/p>\n
For over forty years I believed I would have been crushed under Dad\u2019s fathering during my teens if I hadn\u2019t been delivered by divorce.<\/p>\n
Photo by Liane Metzler<\/p><\/div>\n
But what if my parents\u2019 marriage and my relationship with Dad had been salvaged like the family Duster?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d extrapolated Dad\u2019s parenting when I was in elementary school into what kind of father he would have been to a teen. But maybe he would have lightened up like most parents.<\/p>\n
Maybe our mutual love of competitive swimming could have served as the body shop for our father-daughter relationship. Maybe we would have been forced to work the wrinkles out if we\u2019d lived under the same roof.<\/p>\n
Instead of regret for what might have been, I think about the Charlie Peacock lyric<\/a> that says if I meet Dad again, we\u2019ll only see what\u2019s right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I pedaled after Dad, each downward push of my legs drawing me closer to meeting his wacko friends. Overhead a storm brewed. With my luck, I\u2019d be soaked before I ever hit their house, much less swim practice later. Mom said Dad wanted to show me off to his friends. That was about as ridiculous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2,66,322],"tags":[216,104,392,217],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Car Crash and Other Wrecks - Ann Lee Miller<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n