“Mommy, I crashed your car.”

When my son called me in a recent morning, my brain refused to comprehend his words. Then came a mixture of emotions and questions in my mind: Is the car drivable and how much would it cost to repair it? And what about the rate of our insurance? Why did I let him drive our best car? Where is he and what was he doing there anyway?

I cannot remember what I actually said to him first. But I remember forcing myself to ask if he was OK at some point.

“Yes, I’m OK. But the car has to be towed. Can you come and get me?”

The 30-minute drive to a mall where he had been dropped off by a kind policeman felt like an eternity. The accident ruined my morning for sure but my own reactions to his call disturbed me more than anything else. I kept asking myself why I was so worried about material things and why I always rushed to judgment.

I tried to rationalize my reactions: Maybe I could not bear to imagine my child getting hurt; Since he could call me, I “knew” that he had not been hurt.

But even though my son was not physically hurt, I am sure that he was shaken up emotionally. I wished my first reaction had been a sincere concern for my son’s well-being. I desperately hoped that I had not said anything damaging to him.

A few days later I went to see our totaled car at a towing yard. It was sad to say goodbye to our favorite car. Then I noticed a car that was completely mangled up. The thought of my son caught in such a car made me shudder. I realized how fortunate we were to have only lost a car. It suddenly did not matter who had caused the accident.

Once, a woman told me that she had decided to divorce her husband after a motorcycle accident. The decision had nothing to do with the accident itself, she said, but had to do with her reaction to it. When she first heard about the accident, she immediately worried about the motorcycle rather than her husband. This, to her, meant that she no longer cared for him.

I believe that I care for my son—and all my children for that matter. I am thankful that my son was unharmed so that I have more time to become compassionate toward him and less attached to material things.