The ongoing saga of my car

Thidaughter, s was when I first started to drive again

after two years away from the wheel

As many of you may know, I drive a 2004 VW Beetle convertible that I adore. It’s my “I’m-not-your-typical-grandmother” car, and I adore zipping around in it—or I did. For almost two years, when I had so much trouble with my hip and the surgery, the car sat—first outside my cottage and then outside my son’s house in Tomball, where I thought they would drive it. They didn’t, and when I finally was able to drive again, I had to do a lot of expensive repairs.

I had such a sense of release and freedom. I drove with a joy and confidence I never had before. Lately though that confidence has been replaced by uncertainty and a slight tendency toward panic. Long story short, I’m not enjoying driving much, and it’s a real dilemma for me. For one thing, it’s a pain when I am alone to get the walker and then me into the car and reverse the procedure whenever I get where I am going. And Jordan doesn’t want me to get in or out alone. She’s afraid I’ll fall or get mugged. So lately it’s been easier just not to drive.

But cars don’t do well just sitting. I’ve had to have the battery jumped twice, mostly because I didn’t park it in such a way that Christian could get a car next to it to use jumper cables. Garages have those handy little things they carry around and don’t need cables. Jacob has been good about going out to start it, but it still doesn’t last long. So today, Christian jumped it—we had parked deliberately the last time we started it—and Jordan and I drove to get gas and to get eggs and milk at Braum’s.

My beloved daughter turned into a back-seat driver. “The gas station is on the left”—I know that. I’ve lived in this neighborhood over fifty years. “Slow down. There are people walking in the street”—I see them and am being careful. As I drove in the driveway, “Wait for the gate to open”—I’ve been driving in this driveway with that gate for about twenty years. “Why won’t your windows go all the way up?” Because the door is still open. Sheesh! I can see the handwriting on the wall, the point at which my kids will think I should no longer drive, though after my two-year hiatus, each one had to drive with me to check me out, and each one had different objections. Truth is, I’m a  pretty good side-street driver, not so much on busy streets, and not at all on freeways..

Christian was quite stern with me: I will have to drive it frequently; we can’t keep jumping it. And I can do that, albeit it’s a bit of a pain. Next dilemma: my driver‘s license comes up in July, and at my age I will have to appear in person and take the test, the thought of which gives me the nervous willies. Sometimes they require that you wear your hearing aids and not drive after dark—I’m okay with that. I would like to keep my license, if for no other reason than in another year Jacob will have his learner’s permit, and I can let him drive as long as I am in the car as a licensed driver. I’d probably give him the car, but he doesn’t much like it, and Christian supported him by saying, “It’s not a very masculine car.” What kind of nonsense is that? When I drove it a lot, women came up to me to say, “My husband would kill for that car.”

So here I sit, pondering all these variables. At least, it’s not a decision I have to make tomorrow, and it’s a good distraction from worrying about the corona virus.