.......who was always banging on about how we were young and dumb and looked at the world through rose colored glasses. Said glasses were what let us do the dumb things teenagers do to learn the lessons they need to learn to become Responsible Adults. Contributing Members of Society.
I submit that those rose colored glasses are less a function of youthful stupidity than they are a measure of time and wisdom. A coping strategy that makes what could have been tragic, less so. They let us look back and see how lucky we were to survive. They let us see the humor in the situation so that we can keep our sanity and continue to live life fearlessly. If we didn't, we would lock ourselves in padded rooms and never come out again.
The older I get and the more time I spend with my mother watching her decline, the more rosy my glasses tend to be.
Last summer we had to have The Driving Talk.
Until about a year ago, mom had been driving herself where she needed to go. If we were out of her favorite bread and I had forgotten to pick it up (because I am clearly NOT the expert shopper she is. Was. Whatever.) If she was meeting the girls for coffee or going out for tacos on Friday, she did just fine with short trips around town.
Then we had the accident.
Coming back from the grocery store she was in the inside lane. She knew she had to turn right to get to our street, so she went to change lanes and either didn't look behind her or did, and because the
Toyota 4 Runner is so poorly designed for seeing behind you, she clipped the right front tire of a grain truck. The grain truck, being just a smidge bigger than her, kind of pulled the 4 Runner in towards it and then dragged it backwards creasing the passenger door and ripping open the right front quarter panel like a damn aluminum can.
In total, about $8500 in damage. It's lucky it was so new (2010) or it would have been totaled.
No one was hurt. Physically. And the grain truck only sustained minimal damage.
The only casualty of that day was my mother's confidence. Up until that day she knew she had a little memory problem. After that day, she knew her brain wasn't functioning the way it once did. And if you don't think there's much difference in those two statements, you would be wrong. It was agonizing to watch that new normal come to be. It was awful to have to explain to her day after day for a month that no, you can't take the car. I can take you or I can go get it for you. It was like a video tape set to auto-rewind and playing over and over and over and over and over.......and over again.
There were tears. There were tantrums. It wasn't until we saw her Doctor that Ma was able to grasp the severity of what happened and the possibility of something far, far worse happening if she continued to try and drive. Ma finally gave in. God bless Dr. Rudo Ambayi. She was able to get Ma to understand that not letting her drive wasn't because we were being mean, it was because we didn't want anything to happen to her. My mind had long since run the gamut of possible outcomes - getting lost, hitting a child on a bike, hitting a pedestrian, not noticing red lights and killing herself or someone else.....the list was endless and the stuff of nightmares.
Ma still has little episodes of frustration where she gets angry because we're out of something and she can't just go get it. She isn't dealing well with "being a burden." (Her words, not mine.) I am, however, learning to, as Linda said, pick the battles. It's a long, slow, exhausting learning curve. But I'm getting there.
And I thank the universe daily for those Rose Colored Glasses.
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