I got a call from my brother last night, saying he's not very good
with Mothers day. Right. Last year, I managed to get him to
call her a bitch. What could he have done to top that?
This Sunday evening, my brother is calling me from the Hospital.
I spoke to Mom just Sunday morning, wished her a happy mothers day. Her plans were to go on a mountain bike ride with my brother. Cool, I'm on a mountain bike ride with some friends on mothers day too.
Two years ago, Mom came on a mountain bike ride up to Wilder with me. She was fairly new to mountain biking, and we were on a supposedly easy ride. On one of the little hills there was a rut, and I hadn't warned her about the motorcycle dictum - look where you want to go. Do not look where you don't want to go. She looked at the rut, thought, "oh, that's nasty, I don't want to go there" - went there, and fell over & cut her elbow. Not bad, a bandage and a bruise, but my brother was furious when he saw mom after the weekend. "That should have gotten stitches!" Mom didn't want to go to the hospital, the bandage worked, things were fine.
In the two years since, my mother has ridden her mountain bike occasionally and has become more confident on trails, and has always in all things been a speed demon. So on Sunday, she gets ahead of my brother (who is an expert class racer - but he's hanging back due to his wife who is extremely cautious), and heads down a pretty steep hill with a nasty rut in the bottom.
My brother knows this trail well, and is aware of the danger, races to catch her, yelling for her to slow down, but to no avail.
Mom hits the rut and goes over the handlebars, down hard. Helmet is destroyed, hand swollen, bruises on hip and shoulder, and her sunglasses gouged her forehead. Blood is everywhere, as head wounds bleed a lot.
Mom, as usual, shakes it off, and rides back to the car. My brother protests - first, she definitely hit her head and has no helmet now, two, they're not sure about her hand, three, jeez she just had a big crash. He'd prefer she just walk out, but the bike still rolls, so she'll ride.
Back at the car, my brother wins the hospital argument, and they go. They x-ray her hand - it's broken. The lacerations on her forehead require subcutaneous stitches.
Economical as ever, Mom asks the surgeon stitching up her forehead if he can take up some extra slack, a little mini face lift as long as he's there.
She's back at work today, no problems. A little purple eye shadow
kinda makes things less obvious.