The Sad Inevitable Jolt ~ When?

Last Wednesday, after our early gym time then a special massage appointment for me (addressing a rascally hip), since we were close by, Bill and I decided to treat ourselves to Eggs Benedict at the Silver Spur in Capitola. That’s a restaurant about six miles from our house, easy drive.

When we’d finished, Bill said, “Let’s go say hello to the lawyer…”

Lovely. My lawyer daughter’s office was five minutes’ away and although she discourages drop-in trade, we went.

Thea was alone, greeted us warmly, welcomed us to come in and sit down. Immensely successful, my daughter has no secretary, runs her office entirely by herself. She is a marvel.

Chatting chatting I casually mentioned we were going to L.A. for Christmas and while initially I’d thought I’d like to drive, we’d decided not to…

As I spoke the words, I wondered whether her brother had been in touch—my eldest son lives in L.A. and for some reason had hissy fits all over my cell phone hearing of my driving six hours down the coast.

“Sounds good,” my daughter said evenly. Then from out of the blue: “Ma, you shouldn’t be driving at all anymore.”

If I’d been wearing a set of false teeth, they would have popped kerplunk onto the floor.

My attractive sixty-five-ish long-honeybrown-haired daughter relaxing in an armchair a few feet from me said evenly, “I’ve been worried about it. We both have.”

My son-in-law was not, in my experience, one to worry about mundane affairs. Me.

“Really?”

A nod.

“How come?”

“Well, first of all, you don’t need to drive. It’s just so easy to take a bus around town. We hop on the bus all the time. Safeway delivers groceries. So does New Leaf. And Santa Cruz has lots of vans that will take you to doctors’ appointments…I have several clients who are driven to appointments.”

I’ve seen those vans in parking lots wheeling out decrepit old people in their wheelchairs. The sight makes me shudder and an interior voice says, “There but for the grace of God go I…us…we…”

“Tell me, dear. On what exactly do you base your opinion?”

Pause. Then, “All the dents in your car.”

Whose car had they been looking at? Our grey 2019 Rav4? I was tempted to get up and go outside to her office parking lot and walk around checking my car…had I been missing something?

What did flash through my mind was the blue paint on the driver’s door. Early in the COVID epidemic, one frantic morning in a jammed gas station, somebody somehow bizarrely maneuvered me up against the station’s blue wall. As I slowly started to pull away, I was stunned to hear scratching sounds—discovered the sounds were streaks of blue paint scraping off the wall onto my car door. A little blue is still there.

But no dents. My car has no dents.

I was too shocked to mention this. And my lawyer daughter’s face told me it would do no good to try to parry with this thrust.

Beyond dents, it crossed my mind to wonder when my children had been in my car with me driving. They are the type who, unless their wrists and feet are bound, will do the driving, thank you very much. So not in the fourteen years I’ve lived in Santa Cruz could I think of when either had been a passenger in my car with me behind the wheel.

So I asked: “And my driving? I don’t remember when you’ve driven with me—”

Lawyerly Card played: “Ma, you are a scattered person. Therefore, you are a scattered driver. It’s time to stop.”

I folded my hands, studied them, wondered what my angel husband to my left was thinking.

Bill spoke: “I haven’t found your mother’s driving unsafe…I—”

“But you’re blind!” Thea exclaimed.

I could think of nothing comforting to say to my dear husband. It was true, sadly, but only to a degree. Bill suffers from macular degeneration, but in the car he is a whiz at side-seat driving—quick to point out there’s someone on my left, which is visually my weaker side. Bill can’t read or drive but he can see to get around and has very good peripheral vision.

“Ma, we just want you to be safe. For example, you get on Highway Seventeen with all the cars going eighty miles an hour and you wouldn’t be safe–”

Highway Seventeen is the twenty-six mile four-lane route through the mountains from Santa Cruz to Silicon Valley, at all times fraught with speeding commuters. From my first day on Seventeen I’ve been careful, generally cruising along in the slow right lane where nobody ever wants to pass. Never have I had even a close call on Seventeen.

And that morning’s drive from our house to the gym to the Silver Spur then on to Thea’s was a no-brainer…light traffic, plenty of stop lights, everyone courteous…

Our Santa Cruz is like most California communities—maybe like all across the country—commercial areas clustered with cars, trucks, motorcycles, vans, bikes, pedestrians, the errant dog here and there waiting to cross the street, some patient, a few darting out impatiently. Driving in Santa Cruz is mostly a matter of watching for the sudden appearance of a bicycle. Easy.

Our house is on the western end of town—just before Highway One breaks away to take you up to seaside Davenport. We’re just one mile from our gym, two superb bakeries, two big markets, a wine shop, pizzeria, ice cream parlor, bike shop, garden shop, and favorite restaurants. We’re two miles from grandson Cameron’s high school, several friends, most of our doctors, our pharmacy, the university, and other favorite restaurants. Around three miles from more friends, the post office, Trader Joe’s and other fine markets, our bank, department stores…six miles from the hospital and more fine doctors…

But in fact I have already put a damper on my driving. Last winter when Cameron had nighttime LaCrosse games at the high school, I took a well-lit backstreet route there and home—avoided main Mission Street swarming with traffic. It was then I decided no longer to drive past my comfort level—i.e. streets I don’t know intimately–at night. That Can’t-Drive-A-Distance-At-Night turned into “Two miles from home in the dark is my limit.” It worked beautifully. We sacrificed very little in what we wanted to do.

Past no dents in our car, I didn’t mention to my daughter the last time I had a traffic ticket was about seven years ago in San Francisco when I thought I was okay making a left turn on Mission Street into an alley. Wasn’t. The ticket before that was another left turn, but from an alley—and it was a block from my mother’s house in Brentwood…twenty years ago. That’s been it for tickets.

Finally silence fell. I could think of nothing to say. Bill also was mute.

But my daughter kept up her bright-eyed reassurance that we’d be helping the environment, it was fun and pleasurable being chauffeured…and the bus was so easy.

Now I love being on a bus. Have taken public buses all my life, beginning in the fifth grade when Morley Gumpert and I took my boxer dog from Laurel Canyon to Pershing Square in downtown L.A. to enter Corbett in a puppy show …Then buses in New York…Paris…London… Rome… I’ve been on great buses. And great cable cars in San Francisco. I’m not a snob about public transportation. But later Bill reminded me that walking to, standing waiting for, then walking from a bus in Santa Cruz on his arthritic ninety-five year-old legs—for him–is a bit much…

And something else.

At this surprising point in my life, I have become keenly keenly aware of TIME. Every moment wasted is painful. There’s so much I want/need to do and of course I’ve no idea how much time is left for me. Standing around waiting for a bus—if I don’t have to—is to me at this point not the highest and best use of my precious allotment.

In a Summing-Up Tone, The Lawyer said, “And don’t forget, even if you survive an accident, it could cost you everything you own.”

True indeed.

How did the visit end?

I was so stunned and–scattered or not–I was brought up to be dutiful…was not given lawyerly gifts of argument…I heard myself telling my daughter I guessed I would not be driving any more…  Thea was pleased.

And then Fate put her oar in.

We had arranged for dermatologist appointments the next day in San Jose (twenty-seven miles away)…for my glasses to be adjusted at the oculist in Los Gatos (twenty miles from home)…, then a much-anticipated lunch date with my best friend in the seventh grade and her daughter and granddaughter from Australia, also in Los Gatos.

We’re talking Highway Seventeen.

I’d made those dates weeks ago when driving Seventeen was something I routinely did. Now Fate’s ironic timing struck me. No question it was a test. In my mind’s eye I had a hand-painted picture of Bill and me in our grey Rav4 in the middle of Highway Seventeen crumpled into a nubbin …daughter and son-in-law standing over us, shaking their heads saying, “We told them so!”…cars backed up all the way to Santa Cruz yelling and cursing in frustration…

“We should take Uber tomorrow,” Bill and I agreed. We did. Three different drivers. Expensive. Of course Thea was right: it was pleasant and a relief being chauffeured through this frantic pass. The drivers were interesting. And I rode in my first Tesla because we chose The Green option—electric vehicles.

The next next day, we happened to be seeing our internist (yes, I did drive there, six miles, tried not to feel guilty), told him about The Conversation.

Dr. Lewis shook his head, said he thought I was fine for driving, particularly on the close-by rounds I mentioned. To my surprise and delight, he mentioned the DMV can arrange an evaluating driving test for seniors. He ordered one for me. Perfect. Will let you know the outcome when it happens.

A word about timing. My L.A. son had assured me it was time for me to stop driving because I took my mother’s car keys from her when she turned ninety. Now that I was ninety, my time had come.

Diminution by the Numbers.

But he misremembers.

She’d just turned ninety-three.

Unhappily, my mother the artist was showing clear signs of needing to stop driving. Every time she drove home, she’d aim to park in the carport at the back of the garage but she’d keep going and smash into the garage wall. The wall was a crumpled mess and the front of her T-Bird was a crumpled mess.…

She would swear—then laugh nervously—then swear—then call for me or someone to come help her out of the car.

Now and then I would say—throwing the line away– “Don’t you think maybe it’s time…remember when we had to take the car keys from Daddy?..the dear man was dangerous…”

But my mother, indomitable in all things, was not giving up driving. Even though she failed the driving test at the DMV in Santa Monica…

Instead she said, “Sylvia, I want you to take me down to Palm Springs—all my friends tell me the Palm Springs DMV is easy, they all got their licenses renewed there.”

I managed to stall on that one. And then fortunately Ma couldn’t get an appointment at the Palm Springs DMV because she didn’t live there. Phew.

Then late July 2003—my mother had just turned 93–came the transformative event at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market. Do you remember it? The ghastly report of an eighty-six year-old man in his 1992 Buick LeSabre who killed ten people and injured seventy more. He did exactly what Ma did when trying to park—confused the accelerator pedal for the brake pedal.

When we read the story together in the newspaper—it was not three miles from my mother’s house–I didn’t mention to my mother that her Thunderbird Saloon car was close to the size and shape of the luckless man’s Buick.

Lethal.

My mother was a gifted woman, extremely intelligent, and with that harrowing story, she got up from the breakfast table, went to her purse, opened it, took her car keys, brought them to me.

Proof that timing is everything.

After that, Ma’s marvelous assistant, Joanie Wall, was happy to drive Ma in the T-Bird as needed. Plus my mother had me and a couple of driving grandchildren close by. She managed just fine. She was fortunate.

Why am I telling you this long story?

You know full well car keys unlock things, right? But they are not just instruments.

Car keys are emblems. Symbols.

Independence. Freedom. Escape. I’m outta here…

Car keys are joy, comfort, reassurance—most especially at a challenging, diminishing time of life–of being allowed to be one’s own person for just a little longer…still/again be the grown-up in the room…fly away on the magic carpet…

Kindly permit me to suggest an indulgence:

Should you be of an age with a parent who’s still driving, well before the time comes, do give thoughtful consideration as to how you will approach the dastardly deed…

How, with one simple gesture, you will wrap your parent in chains.

Ask Google “When to take away a parent’s car keys”… Many agencies post excellent articles for guidance. Some warning signs*:

lots of traffic tickets…often getting lost…unable to read road signs or hear sirens…unexplained damage to the car…damage to items near where they park (my mother’s garage wall)…memory lapses… dizziness…slow coordination…anger or agitation that’s out of character)…

More, it’s not just the shock of loss of freedom, it’s a gut-wrenching humiliation of role reversal: Mom/Dad…You’re not the strong take-charge person I’ve known you to be all my life…you’re diminished now…sorry about that…”.

For pity’s sake, wait until you have sound tangible reasons.

Honesty…sensitivity… the keywords.

Don’t regard your parent as a number—The Big 9-0.

Here are my own new rules (until the DMV gives me its evaluation) for as long as I’m granted good health…

Keeping to the three-mile limit…six, if to the hospital….Nighttime driving within two miles and only in neighborhoods I know intimately by daylight….No freeways–grandchild/Uber/Lyft, friend instead…Cross every T, dot every I…Stop fully at every Stop sign…Drive in the slow right-hand lane as much as possible…Always signal before making a turn…NO U-TURNS…No one-hand driving (coffee thermos or sandwich only waiting at a stop light, phone only when plugged into the car system).

Will try to find time for the AARP Safe Driver Course.

I’ve often wished I had a Vespa—not a dangerous motorcycle, just a spiffy two-wheeler with an engine that will whisk me here and there.

Vespa, anyone?

*Mercifully, not one applies to me.

Keys © Sergei Nechaev | Dreamstime.com