December 21, 2017:
There's a reference in a very old journal suggesting that when my mother broke an ankle I rode my bike across town to come to her aid.
I don't remember this, but, it can be reconstructed.
She'd have called asking for help. She'd have refused paramedics — too expensive. I lived without a car, I'd have offered to ride my bike to her apartment, then use her car to drive her to hospital. She'd have agreed, but we would have talked explicitly about the time it would take for me to arrive. Twenty minutes from Ocean Beach to Clairemont.
I'd have hauled ass. Up Sunset Cliffs, across the bridge onto Sea World Drive, north on East Mission Bay, east on Clairemont Drive up the long hill. Or perhaps avoiding the hill slog by taking one of the steeper-but-shorter back streets up Bay Ho, say, Ingulf. I'd have ridden flat out, arrived puffing, grabbed her car keys, steadied her with her arm around my shoulders gingerly to the passenger seat. Then hauled more ass to the emergency room.
The reconstruction is straightforward. Yet it disturbs me that I have no memory of an event which would have been so striking and so stressful.
I was very upset with her that summer over entirely different events. Perhaps those unresolved conflicts drove other memories underground.