Mothers and daughters have … debates … on occasion.
If you’re a mom, that means you started out a daughter — which means you already know all about it.
Especially if you now have a daughter of your own.
Which is precisely why TaLiza Bethea didn’t tell her mother, Roxanne Smith, what she was doing with the money she was banking from her paycheck.
Smith thought her kid was saving for a trip to Las Vegas, only this wasn’t a gamble.
It was a sure thing. We’ll get into that in a bit.
Today is Mother’s Day, and when Smith, 51, refers to Bethea, 27, as both a “blessing” and “miracle baby,” she isn’t just voicing the flowers-and-card bromides this day so brings.
For Smith, her Mother’s Day story began, really, along W.Va. 7 on Jan. 3, 1991.
She can tell you about it, but not from personal memory. She can only go by accounts from the scene.
Smith was bent and tattered like a broken doll.
Her arms and legs were horribly splayed and there was blood — just so much blood.
No one knows who might have heard the squeal of the tires and the wrenching whump that followed.
By the time the strobing of the ambulance lights had drawn people from their living rooms in the nearby trailer park at Osage, a paramedic had already placed a sheet over her body.
It was that bad.
Out of nowhere
Smith, who had lived in Osage for a time when she was a toddler, grew up in Preston County but still had relatives in the coal camp.
That January evening, a Thursday, she and a cousin who lived in the trailer park had planned on heading up to the Coliseum to catch the second half of the WVU men’s basketball game against St. Bonaventure.
Back then, you could get in for free after the second half. They were going to have fun.
She had just turned 21 — six days before Christmas, in fact — and was back in West Virginia for the holidays from Columbus, Ohio, where she had moved recently.
On a fateful winter night 30 years ago the Mountaineers barreled over their opponent 125-64, but Smith never saw it.
She never saw car that barreled over her, either.
Smith was walking to her cousin’s trailer when she was struck.
Blood was seeping through the sheet, and the people looking down thought they were regarding another vehicle-versus-pedestrian tragedy — when her foot and leg began twitching.
That ambulance ride took on life-and-death urgency on the relatively short hop to the Ruby ER.
A grim inventory, then a whisk down the hallway on the gurney.
The surgeons were busy. Brain trauma, broken bones, internal injuries. Stabilize one thing, so you can stabilize another.
Smith languished in a coma for 18 days, and when she woke up, it was in a reverse-time machine.
The newly minted 21-year-old was like a baby, all over again.
“I had to re-learn how to walk and talk and feed myself,” she said. “Everything was gone.”
Along the way she was told she wouldn’t be able to have children, which she registered while literally sweating through the alphabet one letter at a time, as she worked on a grueling salvage mission.
Now, the interesting news …
Three years later, like an Osage miner with a pick axe, Smith carved all the recovery she was going to get.
A relationship with a man, and a bout with a stomach ulcer, told the tale.
Smith had been treated for the ulcer, but the pain was persistent. Her doctor told her there was good news — and interesting news.
First, the good news: The ulcer had basically cleared itself up.
Then, the interesting news: A baby had taken its place, even though she had been told that likely couldn’t happen, with the extent of her injuries.
The man, Bethea’s father, hasn’t been part of her life and she politely declined to discuss him.
“My mother raised me as a single parent,” she said simply.
Those struggles were magnified by the effects of Smith’s injuries three decades ago.
There are physical limitations, and she has been dogged by seizures which are a byproduct of her head slamming the pavement.
Smith has 38 credit hours toward a social work degree at WVU, but had to drop out when she was raising her daughter.
She’s done domestic work over the years, and didn’t want her daughter with the same resume.
“I’m out there mopping floors. I always told TaLiza, ‘Educate, elevate.’ Don’t be like me.”
Bethea was an honors student at Morgantown High School, where she played clarinet and was a section leader in the school’s renowned Red and Blue Marching Band.
She did babysitting after school and also worked the drive-thru at McDonald’s in Sabraton.
“You get a lot of grief,” she said, “when the ice cream machine’s down and people can’t get their McFlurry.”
Doing it anyway
Bethea is a master’s student in social work at WVU. She also holds degrees from WVU Potomac State College and Ross College in Morgantown, where she graduated as a medical assistant.
The latter was so she could better help her mom with health issues still stemming from the accident.
At one point, to Smith’s dismay, she gave up a scholarship to move back home, so she could help her mother more.
“I said, ‘TaLiza, I do not want you doing that,’ ” Smith remembered. “She told me, ‘Mom, you don’t know what you look like when you’re in the middle of a seizure.’ ”
“I’m gonna be there for my mom,” the daughter said. “That’s all there is to it.”
Both allow that there have been spats and arguments along the way. Just like any mother and daughter, they said.
There’s also a foundation of emotion, though, that makes every day, well, Mother’s Day.
“I know the sacrifices she made and everything she’s had to deal with,” Bethea said.
Now, she’s in the process of helping her mother get back into school.
If it works, a mother will receive a bachelor’s diploma in social work at the same time her daughter receives a master’s in the discipline.
‘You know this is yours, right?’
There’s a matter of logistics, though.
That’s why she was being miserly with the money Smith thought was going to that Vegas vacation.
Her mother has to rely on public transportation for her cleaning jobs, which won’t necessarily be practical if she’s back on campus this fall.
The other day, Bethea drove to her mother’s place behind the wheel of a different vehicle.
A 2005 Saturn Ion, with relatively low mileage.
“Hi, Baby,” Smith said. “Uh-oh. Is there something wrong with your car?”
“No, my car’s fine,” Bethea replied. “This one’s pretty good, too. And you know it’s yours, right?”
The miracle baby didn’t present flowers for Mother’s Day. She gave four wheels, instead.
Smith caught a sob, then wrapped her in a hug.
It lasted a while. Neither wanted to let go.
“My baby did this. For me.”
TWEET @DominionPostWV
