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MARA FINK: We don't talk much about the accident anymore. It's normal for my mom to have a keychain with four remote controls to operate various doors and a ramp for the handicapped accessible van she now drives.

SUSAN FINK: I dropped my keys.

MARA FINK: My mom paints. You might have gotten one of the Courage Center holiday cards she painted. It's a winter scene of snow-covered evergreens. It's a lot like the scene she looked out at right after her skiing accident 11 years ago. And while I've known the facts of the accident for a long time, my mom's begun writing about what happened. And I'm beginning to see things from her point of view. The story begins on a night ski on New Year's day, 1999. She was following my dad down a ski trail in Northern Wisconsin.

SUSAN FINK: All of a sudden, I felt myself falling and I hit my face right into the snow. And I couldn't move. And I just knew what had happened. I just knew I had broken my neck.

MARA FINK: My dad skied back to call the ambulance. My sister and I were at a cabin with family friends, unaware of what was going on. My mom lay in the snow for an hour waiting for help.

SUSAN FINK: I was just looking up and I could see the sky and the tops of these pine trees. And pretty soon, stars started coming out. And it was really pretty. And I just thought, OK, well, if I'm going to die, this is the way I would picture it. And I just kept thinking that I wanted to be able to see you and your sister again. And I said, you know, if you're up there, please help me, and I'll do anything. I mean, I'll work as hard as I can to get better.

MARA FINK: And she did work hard. After the accident, she could only move two fingers. A doctor predicted she'd never walk again. As my dad juggled taking care of my sister and me, working, and visiting my mom every night, my mom willed herself to walk down the block with a walker. For a woman who used to run marathons and teach kindergarten, she spent three months in inpatient, physical, and occupational therapy to do something as simple as raising her arms to hug us.

SUSAN FINK: I was worried about stuff like, how is I going to braid your hair and make spaghetti? That was a big one because you guys like spaghetti. And I thought, I'm not going to be able to do that. It just took me like-- I think it took a week of OT to do it in the hospital. Like one day, we'd make the noodles and one day we'd fry the meat. And it was really amazing how hard things were. So I was scared.

MARA FINK: My mom didn't show us how scared she was. For us, she was brave and determined. But every so often something would happen she couldn't control. One time in eighth grade, I came home from school and couldn't find her. She was in her bedroom, sprawled out on the hardwood floor. She had fallen that morning and couldn't get up to reach the phone. She lay there for six hours until I came home. It's only now she can tell me how she struggled with pain and depression.

SUSAN FINK: Oh, yeah, there were some times where-- there was one period where I wasn't-- as soon as you guys would leave, I just-- I don't know if I would get up in the morning or not, but I would-- if I did, I'd go back to bed. I'd watch TV.

MARA FINK: My mom used to worry her accident would hurt my sister and me. She couldn't do as much for us as she used to. But just as it's made her stronger it's made us stronger, too. When I first went away to college, I cried every day. for the first two weeks. I kept calling my mom and telling her I couldn't do it.

She finally laid down the law. Mara, if I can learn how to walk again, you can make it through these next few weeks at school. She was right. As I've moved through my college years, one of the things that's really begun to strike me is the relationship between my parents. My mom says the accident was actually a good thing for their marriage.

SUSAN FINK: I think it helped our relationship because it made you realize what's really important and what's not important to drive each other crazy with.

MARA FINK: They've been through the worst and come out the other side. As New Year's comes around and people make resolutions to lose weight or get organized, I think about what New Year's marks in my family. My mom's accident has taught me that our accomplishments can be gone in the blink of an eye and will be stripped down to the people we really are. My New Year's resolution is to love myself for who I am and not what I've accomplished, and to cherish every morning that I wake up and have the gift of another day. For Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Mara Fink.