Mom and I used to drive down to an orchard in the next town over. to buy bushels of peaches. We would cook the peaches and freeze them in plastic freezer containers. (I would sometimes take them from the freezer and lick off the frozen peach syrup from the container tops, but once I grabbed the wrong container and realized I was licking frozen blood from some sort of meat my mother had frozen in the same kind of container.)

The road from the orchard back home was extremely long and straight, unusual for that area, which had lots of hills and curvy roads. But this road, which I think is the one called Mahopac Avenue, ran straight as an arrow for over 2 miles, no side roads, no intersections. Farmland or forest on both sides.

So driving back with a car full of peaches, her mind on a thousand things, from chickens to paying bills, to steering her kids away from some of the really bad grade school teachers, my mother got totally distracted. She was driving along, probably going about 60, and did not notice the stop sign at Route 6: she flew right across a particularly fast section of that road. People died in accidents like this all the time. And there were no seatbelts or airbags.

But there was no collision; we simply flew across the highway and slowed down on the other side, both aware that we had cheated death. 

I might have said something like “Holy Shit”, but I don’t remember. 

We drove home, shaken, and never spoke about it. I don’t know if she ever told my father. What would be the point? He had enough worries without one more.

I only mentioned this tale to a few Mahopac friends who might appreciate it, but not until my mother had passed away.