There’s No Way I am Giving up Driving
I remember it was May, only two weeks after I drove to Florida with the family for spring break. I did all of the driving, and never felt incapable. Two weeks later, a doctor was telling me I had to give up my driver’s license, and requested I hand it to her because no one trusted me not to get behind of the wheel of a car.
I thought I was dreaming all of this… I depended on my freedom, the ability to come and go as I needed, to bring my children to and from school activities, a friend’s home, concerts, shopping, to pick up a pizza, and I wasn’t going to stop driving; what would it be like to live without a car? This has to be a dream. I kept saying, “I never had a ticket, or not one time was I pulled over by a police officer.” I felt the anger begin to show, I talked loud enough for those in the hall to hear, “I can see!”
I think I repeated the same statement several time but the doctor ignored me. Deep down inside I knew I was having problems with pain in my left eye. Awful pain stabbing like a knife and then it disappeared. I had seen a few specialists who told me it would improve, so they prescribed Prednisone.
It was a different time, when a mother kept too busy to worry about aches and pains. A time when research on the internet was a dream, I did enjoy the small computer I had in the office. The books in the library, all that information, news, interviews, and meeting new people – and what about my other dreams would they be flushed away as unwanted paper?
That day, when some doctor made me hand over a drivers license, as he asked where my wallet was, became a long drive as a passenger, riding on empty. It was the day I never thought would happen, and for reasons we are still searching for.
One thing happened, I began to love public transportation, in any form of travel – there is just so long one can work within the same walls, and without keys. I have traveled the world, and perhaps my own paths would have been different – I can remember things which touched me and others that may have never happened if I drove a car, life is strange how it twists and turns on private roads.
