Well, I had about fifty different thoughts about this post. Here’s how it starts… when I was fourteen and had finally passed (on the second try) my test and received my permit, my mom was the brave soul who sat in the passenger’s seat for the very first time I sat behind the steering wheel. My mom was that brave soul for every one of my firsts up to that point, so nothing was new about that. But here’s what was new… my mom was terrified. Now, I don’t just mean that she was afraid of my driving, or fearful because I never learned anything the easy way, or that she was apprehensive about being the passenger with a student driver. What I never knew about my mom was that she wasn’t a great driver. She wasn’t confident in herself or her skills as a driver.
When you’re a kid and all you know about the world is what you see in your own house and school and the small little fishbowl of the world… you don’t know that your parents are inexperienced. You have no clue that they have doubts, fears, questions, and apprehensions. Parents are like superheroes. They are who you see when the cape is on, because kids rarely see the Peter Parker side of parents.
So, when I got in the car on the gravel road, and I put my hands on the wheel in eager anticipation, I had no thoughts about my mom’s concerns or worries or fears. I felt energized by my own fear. My nerve endings were tingling, my ears were buzzing, my hands, white-knuckled on the wheel. My foot was made of lead though, and as soon as it hit the pedal, gravel went flying and mom’s body smashed into the beige cloth of that Chevrolet Impala. Mom told me to let my foot off the gas, and I did. She told me to try to balance out the weight of my foot on the pedal, and I did. She told me every move to make as a driver until we made it the three-mile trek back to the house. I would not have known what to do had it not been for my mom telling me every single step. Of course, I didn’t let her know that. I made it seem like she was bothering me with her instructions.
So, we both had secrets, mom and me. We both had fears that we didn’t want the other one to know about.
You see, when my mom was a teenager, she was not a good driver. She got a car stuck sideways in a garage. Seriously. Ever since then, she didn’t exactly have a cheering section whenever she drove. She didn’t have someone telling her each time she got in a car that she was brave, strong, and intelligent. She didn’t really have anything, but the sheer will it took for her to get in and drive to the place she needed to go. That’s also exactly how far she drove. Door to door, and hardly further than to town.
But still, even though she was not confident and was terrified, mom put me behind the wheel and let me drive, and told me every single step along the way. She put up with my mouth and attitude and know-it-all stuff, and she sat there, teaching me the whole way home. Through all her insecurities, all her doubts, her trepidation. She taught me.
When I’d become a tad bit better of a driver, my mom brought me off the gravel roads and trusted me enough to drive into the next big town to get groceries. While this may not seem important to kids who grow up in cities, for us rural and small town residents, I assure you, this was a big deal.
When we’d gotten our groceries and were headed out of town, I wanted to take a particular route. Today, I’m not sure what the reason was. My guess is that I wanted to drive by some boy’s house to see if he was home or something unreasonable such as that… at any rate, to get to where I wanted to go, I had to cross the busiest road in town, the four lanes. It was a county road, with two lanes on each side. In time, I would come to affectionately term this road “the fours”, with all the other cruising hormone-driven teenagers in the county… but today, with my mom and all our groceries in the car, it was the four lanes, and it was a busy road, and I was going to cross it right over Marion Avenue. The thing about Marion Avenue is that it had no stoplight, just a stop sign, and you had to look both ways and make sure both ways were clear before you crossed. To a driver with a few years’ experience, no big deal. To a grocery-getting momma with a fourteen-year-old who has less than a year’s experience – Very. Big. Deal.
As I was rolling up to the stop sign, looking left, then right, then left again, my mom, very softly asked, “Why don’t you go to the light?” It seemed ridiculous to me to go another block west, just to wait at a silly light, turn south again, and then turn back east. It just made sense to cross over the whole thing and stay on the street I wanted to use. I remember thinking how much of a “fraidy cat” my mom was that day. I crossed the road and made it safely across. I don’t remember what mom said, or what her face looked like, I just remember feeling accomplished, because I did what she thought I couldn’t, or shouldn’t do.
Fast forward a few years when I went to get my driver’s license. My sixteenth birthday was awesome! I went to work, where we had a little party during break time, and I brought fudge-sickles for a treat. I still love fudge-sickles. Anyway, there, amidst all the white uniforms (which we were paid an extra $0.10 to wear) and hairnets, my mother presented to me my very own key chain, with my initials engraved in it, and two silver keys attached. Yep, I’m that old. After work, mom took me to Iowa City to get my license. A quite daunting trip for her to say the least. She made me drive, because, I thought, she was making sure I had the skills to pass the test. I know so much more now, and I’ll bet you a doughnut that she made me drive, not because she was testing me, but because she was avoiding the challenging task of driving in the city.
Either way, as we went to the Department of Transportation with her guidance, I drove through the city, stopping at this light and that, turning on this street onto that one. I went in and passed my driver’s license test like a boss and walked out with an ear-to-ear smile! I was so excited! I could finally drive that fantastic blue Chevy that dad was buying for me! Pulling out of the lot to head for home, I turned the blinker on in my mom’s car. I was turning out onto a side street and heading in a direction opposite a stoplight, to cross over another busy intersection, when my mom again, gently asked me, “why don’t you go to the light?” Again, I thought, there are so many streets in this town, so many other options than staying on the main road, always following the direct path, always doing it the way everyone’s always done it. Let’s take a joy ride. Let’s explore! But no, mom wanted to go to the light. This time, I went to the light, because it’s what she wanted me to do, and let’s face it, the woman was paying for lunch!
Fast forward many more years, to my married life, when we were living in a big city. The first thing I would do whenever we moved to a new city was take off driving to find the ocean. Whenever I found the ocean, I knew I was as far east as I could go. Then, I could always find my way back to our place. I never worried about where I was going unless I happened to stumble into a bad neighborhood or an area which had a lot of one-way streets or roundabouts; but living in the city forces you to use the lights. Because in the city, crossing a four-lane road on a side street might take about fifteen minutes, depending on the time of day!
It’s a funny thing, the lessons that moms give their kids without even really knowing where that lesson might lead. As I grew in my spiritual life, and my relationship with Jesus, I began to have questions that aren’t easily answered. No tangible evidence of faith lies outside a person’s own story. Sure, there are testimonies everywhere, living miracles which came with no explanation, but there is always someone to come along and try to pop holes in my theory of faith. And so, when I was in the waiting stage of my pregnancy, those long 13 years of trying to believe that God would give me the child I was begging for, not because I deserved it, not because I wanted it, but because it was His good will for me. When I was wondering how it would happen when not one, not two, but three of our country’s top fertility clinics and doctors told me that it was not possible without severe intervention, which included the use of someone else’s eggs. When I was asking where God was when I was crying at night, and begging him to hear me, answer me, and give me just one little sign… When money was tight and we never could make the ends meet, when we fought about everything because we couldn’t agree on anything, when we had to fight to stay together, against the advice of even his parents… that lesson kept repeating. I could hear mom’s voice whispering to me, “Why don’t you go to The Light?”
And so… now I hear her often… whether driving a car or in my meditation time, whether I’m wondering who to listen to or which direction I should go… I do what she’s always told me to do… I go to The Light.
Momma Rich's 