Over Christmas 1994, Erica went home to Boise, but planned a stop in Anchorage to meet my family. Unfortunately, on my way to the airport to pick her up, my mom’s car (which I was driving) got T-boned (head on collision to the driver’s side of the car). A minivan coming down a hill to a four-way intersection couldn’t stop, ran a red light, and intersected with me.
The crash knocked me out of the intersection and into the left-turn lane that would have taken me back the way I was coming from. My glasses wound up on the other side of the intersection, so I think I may have broken the window with my hard head. The driver’s side seat wound up perched on the emergency brake in the middle of the car.
Remarkably, I walked away with nothing but a bruise on my left leg and a tiny cut on one finger (probably from broken glass). But, of course, I still had to go to the emergency room to be checked. So my mom took me to the ER, and my step-father had to go pick Erica up from the airport — despite never having met her!
I was okay, but my mom’s car — the one I learned how to drive in — was totaled. Otherwise, Erica and I had a fairly pleasant weekend before we returned to Fairbanks together. I think we went to see Muppet Treasure Island with my niece Jenny. That movie stayed important to us over the years.
Around our return to college, Erica wanted to ask me my opinion on something. When she was born, her mother was dating a guy named Lindsey, who acted like a surrogate father to her when she was little. Sue (Erica’s mom) and Lindsey didn’t stay together, but Erica really felt like he was her dad (not biological). When her mom had a breakdown, she went to Lindsey first to see if he could take her, but Lindsey was in school and didn’t think he could handle being a single dad. So Erica got shipped to her grandmother’s house, and Lillian HATED Lindsey.
They completely cut him off from Erica. He would send cards and gifts but Erica never received them. There’s even a family story where he tried to visit Erica, and Erica’s grandfather Lloyd swung an axe at him.
So in January 1995, she hadn’t heard from Lindsey for most of her childhood. She had his address, but was scared and unsure about writing a letter to him. She didn’t know if he would remember her, or how he would react. I encouraged her to reach out. “What do you have to lose?”, I asked.
She sent the letter, and almost immediately, Lindsey responded! He had always wanted to reconnect, but lost track of her address when Lillian passed away. Sue had moved to Boise, Idaho and remarried, so Lindsey could never get in contact with her. They started writing back and forth and soon scheduled a visit to Fairbanks for Lindsey and his wife Gail.
I was freshly into my Social Work degree and really enjoying it. Eventually, I convinced Erica that working to help good people in need was better than working to put bad people in jail, so she also joined the Social Work major — but she never gave up the Criminal Justice degree. Instead, she started an ambitious dual-major.
The following summer, Erica and I moved into an apartment together. Oddly enough, it was in the same apartment complex as I lived in with Rachel. I remember when we moved in, I suggested going to the store to buy aluminum foil to tape over the bedroom window. (In Alaska, during the summer, the sun never really sets, so you get daytime light blazing into your bedroom around the clock.) A sleepless night or two later saw her holding the foil up while I taped it down.
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