I renewed my driver’s license last week, reminding me not only of the way things were, but also why I pray every time I get behind the wheel.
There was no school driver’s ed in my day. Dad said he’d do it (God help me!), as mom absolutely refused. “A flibbertigibbet and too young.” she declared. (This from the woman who learned at 12 and bumped along on dirt roads.) But mother was calm and long-suffering (usually) and dad (almost always) lacked the patience to fill a gnat’s navel. I didn’t look forward to his lessons, but oh, how I wanted that license! I had visions of ferrying my friends all over Atlanta, to games and lessons and to eat onion rings at the Varsity as often as possible. So I gritted my teeth and said, “Let’s go!”
“It’s just a month ’til you’re 16” dad said, “more than enough time for me to teach and you to practice.” First I had to memorize the rulebook and he tested me on it constantly until I had it word for word. Only then could we go to my “classroom,” the giant fenced in parking lot at the steel company where he worked. In those days there were no night or weekend hours. It was there that I learned to start, stop, shift gears and navigate hills, the latter on inclines to the loading docks.
Dad lived up to his short fuse reputation and I learned new vocabulary words, as well as how to drive. Forty-eight hours before the big day, I took my written and driving tests and passed them both. Dad handed me the keys and I drove home. I don’t think mom let me drive her until I had children of my own. She had no qualms, however, about sending me on constant errands which often including picking up and dropping off my younger siblings. I was sent to the grocers, the dry cleaners, and the drugstore and handled the interminable comings and goings of my sister’s horseback riding and my brother’s golf lessons.
Enter prayer, via the nuns who taught me. In those days, nuns did not drive. They took the bus or depended on volunteers – usually the mothers of their students – to take them to their appointments. About 15 minutes after I got my driver’s license, Mother Superior was on the phone. “Mrs. Lynch,” she said. ”Isn’t it wonderful about Barbara’s test? And I hear she has the use of a car during her senior year. Now isn’t that just grand!”
So I often found myself heading for the convent after school with up to five nuns sliding into the red Chevy coupe that was my best friend in 1952. Before I was permitted to start the engine, the senior nun called for silence and prayed. That used to irritate my teenage pride, but I never had an accident with those nuns. And I’ve never had an accident when I’ve remembered to pray since. They used to tease that maybe with me they should say a whole rosary instead of just a Hail Mary before we got started!
Nowadays with so many cars and so much cell phoning and texting, I pull out all the reserves. And why not?