In scary moment, kindness was woman’s first instinct

I remember a stream of fire from the gasoline moving across the road. My brother, John, told me many years later, that our father kicked in the car window to get me out of the backseat of our car that was on fire.

I was 4 years old, it was 1957 — and I often traveled with my father on his house calls to see his patients. It was dark; wintertime in Ohio.

My father carried me in the cold frosty air as he trudged up the hill through some woods to a house. I remember the soft welcoming lights in the windows. The nice lady invited us into her home so my father could use the telephone and call my mother, and the police, I am guessing. She gave me some milk and cookies. I played dolls with her daughter who was about my age.

When I was much older, my mother mentioned to me that she and my father went to look at the accident site the next day. There, on the side of the road among the ashes and twisted metal, she found my badly scorched doll. Scared that she might have lost us forever, the devoted love between my father and mother bloomed another child the night of the accident.

Nine months later, my brother, John, was born, to testify to this story. My, how we learn to cherish our treasures and abilities to see more clearly when loss threatens us in the doorways of our lives.

I do not remember very much about the woman on the hill, but I remember her home was full of warmth and love. She did not think twice about helping us when we needed help the most. No one did in those days. Kindness was a person’s first instinct. Maybe that is why I do not remember being afraid.