It was spring of 1981. "I’m going to an all day conference on ‘Stress Management’. You want to go?" my friend Eleanor Follett asked me.

Did I want to go? Ask that question of any mother of seven whose husband is dieting at the same time he’s given up smoking and what do you think the answer will be?

I signed up.

My husband Sam was out of town that fateful day. I’d told my daughter Claire that she could drive our suburban to school. Eleanor and I were having a cup of coffee before leaving when Claire came back into the kitchen.

"Mrs. Follett, I just scraped your car. I’m sorry. I didn’t notice the car when I was backing up..."

We stood in the driveway looking at two rows of deep gouges running the length of Eleanor’s brand new car. Our big red suburban stood unscathed beside it.

"I thought I heard a noise when I was backing up, so I drove forward," Claire explained. Ah... that explained the second row of gouges.

"We’ve got insurance. We’ll pay for the damages," I babbled. Eleanor said little.

A crestfallen Claire drove off to school and we returned to the kitchen. Go to the conference or not? That was easy. We’d go. Hopefully, we’d both learn how to deal with the current situation.

I took copious notes at the conference but didn’t get any info on how to break the news to Sam when I got home. I’ve suppressed that particular scene from memory but I know it gave me the opportunity to manage lots of stress.

The following Sunday night (it was Easter Sunday), Claire answered the phone. The call was from Teresa, a freshman at M.I.T. She’d broken the middle finger of her left hand playing softball. A bad break, dislocating the knuckle. She was crying from the pain.

"You can’t tell Dad," Claire whispered. "Can you call back in a week or two?"

"Why?" Teresa yelled.

Claire explained about Sam giving up smoking and being on a diet and, most importantly, what had happened to Follett’s car. "So you see," she finished reasonably, "you can’t tell him now."

Teresa straightened Claire out on that score. Sam and I got on the phone.

It turned out indeed to be a bad break, initially mishandled, involving two years of physical therapy, eventual surgery, a three inch file of insurance reports and a deformed finger. More opportunities for stress management....

When Teresa called a few years ago to tell us about the fracture she'd just gotten in her hand, (same hand, bone attached to same finger!) she prefaced her remarks with "Is Dad on a diet? Has he given up smoking? Have you had an accident with the car?"

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