The last time I drove my car was almost a year ago, June 24th of last year. We had been at a Fete St. Jean party at the club. When we left to go home it was raining hard, and the car had a flat tire. I could not even contemplate changing a car tire, I might as well lift a house, both equally impossible. A kind person changed the wheel for us. The drive home was a nightmare, the rear right wheel locked up for some reason shortly after we left the parking lot. I decided I would get the thing home if at all possible without me having to get out of the car. I was frightened and close to panic. The car shuddered and squealed from the seized wheel but I was able to keep it going, somehow. I was so afraid of having to get out of the car, move, talk to people and coordinate getting the car taken care of and getting home. It was all too much. As George T. had warned me once, don't let your mind write checks that your body can't cash. I was out in the rain with a busted car and about to get into real trouble. We made it home safe.
I decided not to fix the car right away, to do without for a while, save some money. Summer past, fall then winter and now spring is here. I have not driven a car. I got rid of our car in November when I first started to realize that maybe it would be better if I gave up driving. Better for everybody. Better for that little kid I will not hurt because I lost consciousness behind the wheel.
Driving was something I learned to do in the 60's. I bet I spent time during the late 50's on my dad's knee steering on the highway. Those were different times. I crashed my first car twice, both times lucky to get away clean, before I was 19. One was my fault, the other not. Both I would have skated away from only a few years later when I had learned to control a car. I worked hard at learning how to control a car. Parking lots and losing control were one of my favorite things to do. You gotta lose it to know how to get it back when it's all going south on you. I ran the uninhabited dirt roads in Rawdon where there were no houses or people, yet. I think I got pretty good at it if I do say so myself.
Back then we were, collectively, idiots when it came to driving. Everybody drove smashed. If you could walk or crawl to your car you were good to go. Really, it was only as a young adult that awareness that perhaps were were being assholes started to creep in with public service messages on tv. I drove so drunk, so many times it is unfathomable from the perspective of 2014. How I did not kill someone during all that time? We learned and we all stopped doing it. Life went on and a whole lot of folks got to keep living. Ask my bro in law about crossing the T Can in Alberta someday.
When I parked the car last June I had full intention of getting back behind the wheel. Now, I know I never will drive a car again and it's my choice. Fate, karma call it what you will protected me when I was ignorant. I am no longer ignorant about the harm that a vehicle can cause. I had SIX heart attacks last year, and hundreds of minutes where I was debilitated instantaneously by coughing, for minutes at a time, eyes closed, entirely out of it for a minute or two.
This is really the most thought I have given to the matter since I decided for certain a couple of months ago. If I thought about it much the pain would be too sharp to bear. Like a lot of things about this journey, you just have to go with it and not look back. Looking back is death. Looking at now is life. I don't look back much at all and I do not look forward either. I try to see and be. That's all.
A couple of days ago I was sitting by the big window watching a little girl walk with her mother. She kept stopping to bend down to play with the daisies. Nicole and I were talking about me, about how I was doing with being stuck and shut in, the not driving, all of the huge changes in my life. I pointed to the little girl and told Nicole that the little girl was my role model, to become as her was my goal. I want to make all of the adult complexities that permeate life go away. I want to destroy the ego that will one day erase that child. One a man, twice a child. I think I have done well so far. I do not see as I did. I do not carry weight I don't need. I am at peace with the world. As this world shrinks the possibilities expand.
Love.
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