My Mom

This is my favorite story about my mother.
She is 84 and lives in NYC. Recently, she was running cross-town from her job (yes, she still works) to meet a friend for lunch (the woman has more friends than anyone I know). She is tall and thin and wears enormous sneakers, which hit a divot in the sidewalk, right near the curb and sent her flying into traffic on Madison Avenue where she landed, face first (don't worry–she's fine.) She wanted to get up, but a "sweet woman" told her to stay there, another called an ambulance, and three waited with her as she bled profusely (her word) until she was strapped onto the stretcher, loaded up, and off to the hospital. At which point, she refused to give the EMT my phone number. "I'm perfectly fine and don't want her to worry." The admitting nurse at the hospital eventually convinced her to share it by promising they wouldn't call me, which they didn't. She was cat scanned and given four stitches, and pronounced perfectly fine though badly cut and bruised bruised. She waited a long while before being released.
Then she got around to calling me. "Hi Lucinda," she began, in her typical sing-songy phone voice, "I am so lucky! And people are so kind. I was running to have lunch with Lynn when..." Of course, she doesn't understand why I love this all so much. 
​I want to be my Mom when I grow up.

My mother with my daughter