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How Are You Today?
Feb. 29th, 2008 03:45 pmToday I went to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee. Before she took my order, the young barista asked me, "How are you today?" as she always does.
What I wanted to say was: "Well, yesterday, my mother, brother, and four-year-old son, three people whom I love most in the world, were in an automobile accident. My brother's all right but his car is totaled. My child has a broken leg and thankfully he'll mend okay, but I hope never in my life again to see what I saw when I arrived at the scene of the accident yesterday--amid the police cars and ambulances, my baby on a transport board, crying for me and shaking all over with fear, traumatized and crying in pain, surrounded by strangers; and then there's my mother, in a hospital in St. Louis, with a shattered ankle, five broken ribs, and two cracked vertebrae in her back. I saw her blood all over the car and street when I got to the accident because the bones had broken through her skin. The orthopedic doctor here--the same one, in fact, who treated me when I broke my foot and then a year later rebroke the same bone; a very good doctor and highly recommended--referred her over to a research hospital because he didn't want to do the surgery. But I guess she'll be okay too, eventually. I am grateful no one died, but I have been better, thank you."
What I actually said was, "Fine." And then I ordered my coffee.
What I wanted to say was: "Well, yesterday, my mother, brother, and four-year-old son, three people whom I love most in the world, were in an automobile accident. My brother's all right but his car is totaled. My child has a broken leg and thankfully he'll mend okay, but I hope never in my life again to see what I saw when I arrived at the scene of the accident yesterday--amid the police cars and ambulances, my baby on a transport board, crying for me and shaking all over with fear, traumatized and crying in pain, surrounded by strangers; and then there's my mother, in a hospital in St. Louis, with a shattered ankle, five broken ribs, and two cracked vertebrae in her back. I saw her blood all over the car and street when I got to the accident because the bones had broken through her skin. The orthopedic doctor here--the same one, in fact, who treated me when I broke my foot and then a year later rebroke the same bone; a very good doctor and highly recommended--referred her over to a research hospital because he didn't want to do the surgery. But I guess she'll be okay too, eventually. I am grateful no one died, but I have been better, thank you."
What I actually said was, "Fine." And then I ordered my coffee.
