Re: the post about the Villa Rica explosion in December, 1957:
Going through the process of creating this blog, I’ve had a few epiphanies about certain stories that made me consider indications that these “random” events and memories of them may have been linked to each other possibly answering unspoken questions I’ve had about them.
For example, Aunt Faye’s most likely permanent trauma surviving the Villa Rica explosion has never, from 1957 till now in 2025, been a CLICK that maybe resolves a very minor puzzle I never once considered could be. About the same time as the Villa Rica explosion, I went through my own horrific event that had life altering consequences.
When I was 2 years old (circa November 1957), our family was involved in a 2-car accident. Daddy was driving on Hwy. 278 from Hiram toward Powder Springs. A woman driving with her 2-year-old daughter (who didn’t survive) failed to yield at a stop sign and pulled out directly in front of our oncoming car.* I think I was the only survivor who sustained significant injuries.
To this day, I know nothing about the other driver, Mrs. Alexander, or her toddler who didn’t survive.
Cars seats and restraints were not required and, actually, were unheard of in those days (we had lightweight Punkin’ seats that were really nothing more than stiff blankets and certainly wasn’t secured in the car seat.
On impact, having been standing up in the back seat, I was thrown over the front seat. My face hit the steering wheel and knocked out all my front top and bottom baby teeth.**
I have no memories of the wreck or anything afterward. However, I do wonder about a byte that is a random, “unattached” memory I’ve had my entire life that possibly could be from that accident. But of course, I have no way of knowing for sure.
It is a 3-second byte of opening my eyes to a stark white room and lying on a hospital bed absolutely terrified wondering why I didn’t sound like myself. I know that may sound kinda weird, but to this day, I can still “hear” those unfamiliar sounds I made that night (probably an “imprint” of trauma).
If I had to try and describe them, I would say it might be sounds I’d make if I had been crying for a very, very VERY long time without stopping while in a barrel. If my memory is correct, I never sounded like that (to myself) before or after that.
I have no “place to attach” that memory although I’m probably safe assuming it was from that night we had the wreck.
Of course, there could have been other terrifying events that I have completely blocked out except for those 3 seconds.
In 2010, a year before she passed away, Mother confessed to me how difficult it was for her that she’d never been able to reconcile to her satisfaction how my injuries from the wreck were so inconsistent with what actually happened. My face took the brunt of my injuries and resulted in serious bruising and swelling. I’m sure I was unrecognizable! 😲
My mouth hitting the steering wheel should have knocked my teeth INWARD. Mother showed me with her fingers as an example how one would expect teeth to be knocked out if something were being jerked from inside the mouth. Teeth would be pushed OUTWARD. My teeth appeared to have been knocked out from the inside.
Mother said being in that car wreck was SO traumatic for me, for a long time after it, I’d started screaming when I was in the backseat and a car would be driving toward us from the opposite direction.
Some time after the wreck, I remember being at Grandmother Hix’ house, and I kept is telling Grandmother that I wanted my nanny. She would laugh and say that she was my Grandma, and a nanny was a goat. I have no earthly idea why I would have started calling for my nanny after the wreck. But that didn’t last long and she soon became Gran’maw again.
I’ve never seen a picture of myself as a baby except one. There used to be a sepia picture of Mother standing in front of a 1950ish Chevrolet holding 2 infants, one on each arm. She looked absolutely haggard as though completely exhausted and sad.
The first time I saw it when I was about 9, I asked Mother if the other baby was Debbie. She said it was. (Obviously, it couldn’t have been because Debbie is 5 years older than I am. I’m guessing Mother didn’t want to “relive” those days, and it was just easier to say, “Yes”).
Before she passed, I was going through her pictures (which I loved to do occasionally) and that picture of her with the two infants had been replaced with a modified picture that showed her standing holding only one infant. I’m sure I will never know what that was about.
There is one ‘school’ type picture of me when I was two or three. I looked very sad, my hair was tussled, and looked (to me) very inhappy and maybe a little scared. As an adult, I came across that picture and asked Mother why I looked so sad. She said, “I guess you didn’t want to have your picture made.”
There are very few other pictures of me until I turned 4. At 8 years old, I would look through Mother’s photo albums. When I saw those pictures, I kept it to myself that I always thought, “That’s not me!”when I looked at those preschool Polaroid pictures Mother had taken and there are none of me until I’m about 4 years old. But throughout my entire childhood every time I saw a picture of me at 5 or 6 years old, my stomach jumped as though I had butterflies.
The third very short story is that, between two and three years old, I didn’t want anybody else to rock me to sleep except Aunt Faye. Mother said Aunt Faye seemed as happy to rock me to sleep as I was being in her arms after I cried for her at bedtime and she was happy to walk over to put me to bed.
I’m now considering the possibility that Aunt Faye and I needed a each other to heal! It’s not uncommon for “wounded souls” to offer and receive empathy, support and validation by someone who has experienced horrendous fear and pain.. I would think that is a primal instinct even at 2 and 3 years old.
I’m not explaining it very well, I don’t think. But as I said: retelling these stories now together and making the connections between events is really cathartic for me.
I would never, ever, EVER have said anything to Mother, but I have, all these years, wondered why I would have cried for someone NOT my Mother to help me fall asleep. I’m now considering I may have just accessed (or processed?) internal information that I would never have seen otherwise. Aunt Faye was a “kindred trauma victim” like me.
