Family
To My Mom, Driving Was the Incarnation of Status and Freedom
A car lets you come and go as you pleased
“I live my life a quarter mile at a time. Nothing else matters: not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I’m free.” — Vin Diesel
My mother and grandmother never learned to drive. They depended on their feet, their men, or public transportation if they wanted to go anywhere. I remember my mom asking my dad to drive her places. He would suddenly need to talk to mom in the kitchen. Sometimes he was just not in the mood to play chauffeur. Driving someone to their destination, waiting, and bringing them back could kill an entire afternoon.
I was the first of my mom’s children to learn to drive and the first to own my own very raggedy fifteen-year-old car. My mother and grandmother loved riding in that car with me, even when we were only going around the corner. Riding in a car made my mom and grandmother feel like high rollers. When my mom used to take us places, she and her six children would ride public transportation.
I remember smashing my thumb on the back porch screen door. The door not only crushed my thumb but put a large gash in it. The incision started turning black immediately. My mother put hydrogen peroxide and Robitussin on the cut, but the black started spreading down my hand. My cousin put a duck grease poultice on my chest as I started feeling bad.
The tussian was not working. My mom, my five siblings, and I rode to the hospital on the bus. I’m confident I smelled terrible, like duck grease, sweat, and sickness, but no one said a word to us as my brothers dragged me on the bus. My brothers carried me between them while my mom corralled the other children onto the bus.
The tussian was not working. My mom, my five siblings, and I rode to the hospital on the bus. I’m confident I smelled terrible, like duck grease, sweat, and sickness, but no one said a word to us as my brothers dragged me on the bus. My brothers carried me between them while my mom corralled the other children onto the bus. When we got to the hospital, they kept me for two days. My family rode the bus back and forth to see me during that time. When discharged from the hospital, I rode the bus home with my mom.
Once I could drive and had a car, that became a right of passage for all my mom’s children. The ability to come and go when you please was freedom to her. I would bring my beat-up old car over to my mom’s house. My brothers and sisters would drive the car around the block. We would all sit on the porch and support the car ride by waving at whoever was driving.
In my mother’s eyes, you were not grown if you could not drive. Oh, you did not have to own a car; it was the potential you could get in your car and go anywhere you wanted, wherever you wanted, that was appealing to her. My mother saw driving itself as a step up from where she lived her life, so she added driving to the list of things her children would learn to do.
For the rest of her life, once her children and grandchildren were old enough to drive, my mom would cajole them until they had their licenses. She would ohm and ahh over every car no matter the condition it was in. To this day, our family loves to hear when yet another one of us is driving away to their destiny. I know my mom is smiling down at us as we speed down the road.
Toni Crowe retired as the Vice President of Operations to pursue her dream of being a writer. Toni has written six books, two of which won the 2019 Reader’s Choice Gold Awards. Her bestselling business book, “Bullets and Bosses Don’t Have Friends: How Do You Manage A Man Sitting With His Dick in His Hand?” was one of the winners. Her first book, “Never a $7 Whore” was the other.
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