Driving Blind

We all are. It's better with company.

I left with the fog early Thursday morning, boarding the boat as the haze receded, leaving three schooners at their moorings etched against the harbor horizon.

The waving hands of a Steamship Authority employee guided me into my parking spot behind a box truck in the center lane; for once I wasn’t relegated to the side tunnels. Leaving the car, I squeezed between the rows of vehicles to get up to the bow, paused to watch the churning wake through a low porthole, and climbed two flights of stairs to reach the passenger deck.

Turned around as usual, I realized I needed to head aft, past the chattering schoolkids crammed into booths, past the ladies’ head and the snack bar with its dishwater coffee and languishing fruit cups, past the rows of nailed-down metal chairs lined up under the dirty-window view of the grey sea and the sliver of shrinking island left behind.

Leaning my body into the heavy door, I pushed it open against the fierce breeze and stepped out into the morning light and the roar of engines and the squawk of gulls. I let the wind whip my hair tight against my face. I walked to the railing and leaned out, daring the day to wash away my fatigue and fortify me for a long drive.

Heading to America.

I left behind sadness on the Island, a beloved teacher having passed away unexpectedly two days before; an interfaith service planned for everyone grieving and stunned by the atrocities of terrorism, by religious and cultural demonization, by the absence of leadership, by the capacity for hatred.

I left this time without my husband and dog, the former preparing for the last trial of his career as a lawyer, the latter safer on familiar turf now that he is prone to wandering. But that look on his face when I left said it all. Actually, the look on both faces.

Strange to be alone. But determined to be in Delaware with my sister for a medical procedure Dad will undergo on Monday that will require anesthesia. Anesthesia and 93- year-olds make me nervous. And this is just a warm-up – tests really – to see if he is eligible for mitral valve surgery. Or more accurately, MitraClip surgery, a relatively new, less-invasive-than-open-heart-surgery procedure to fix a leaky mitral valve, which he has. Yeah, 93.

The Dad drive: 467 miles from Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to Milton, Delaware. Mostly on I-95, an unforgiving highway I have driven up and down hundreds of times in my adulthood. 

These days I’m lucky: my husband is most often captain of the ship. He prefers to be at the wheel, and I prefer to have a magazine in my lap. Also, he is a better sleeper, so theoretically he is more alert from the get-go.

But no captain this time, just the lieutenant.

The first half of Thursday’s drive was all about staying awake and alert after about five hours of sleep: coffee, CDs, NPR, and a call to my best friend, an attempted call with a friend in Spain. Turns out talking or doing anything on the phone while driving at high speeds does not work for me at this point in my life. Too much distraction. Especially when navigating the jagged route from the Hutch to the Cross County to the Saw Mill – all in the name of avoiding the Cross Bronx Expressway. Stay in the right lane. Quick, get in the left lane. Right lane. Left Lane. Off-ramp. On-ramp.   

At the foot of the George Washington Bridge the dash of the Subaru lit up like a Christmas tree. The CHECK ENGINE light came on, along with a host of other colorful icons, including the one with the car zig-zagging on a slippery road. That one’s for the ABS brake system.

I decided to pay a visit to the Vince Lombardi rest stop, where they’d might as well put one of those memorial bricks for me when I die, I’ve been there so much. I enjoyed the years when the main building was under renovation and there was simply a latrine trailer and a Starbucks truck in the parking lot. Very efficient. The place feels like a vortex of off-ramps and on-ramps with rings of resting trucks circling the parking area like wagons. I would not want to be marooned there.

I opened the glove compartment and grabbed the handy-dandy, easy-to-read car manual and within minutes I had diagnosed all the problems. I jest. I did read a bit of the ridiculously obtuse manual — and called my husband simultaneously. It isn’t the first time the car has played electronic bingo with us. We decided that likely I could limp along to Delaware, watching my braking distance, and hope none of the other lights really meant anything. Did I have my triple A card with me just in case, he asked? Yes. And oh, one other thing. The oil. (I am listening to the worry in his voice reverberate; octaves are dropping.) He (who had been driving this car) had not checked the oil before I left, and he was sure it needed changing. Kicking himself.

Vince Lombardi and New Jersey to the rescue on that one. I drove over to the gas pumps. In New Jersey you cannot pump your own gas; hence there are service people. A kind attendant agreed to check my oil, first helping me find the latch to the hood (I know, I’m not looking good here), and he wound up putting not one or two, but three quarts in. A true disaster avoided there.

The CHECK ENGINE lights did not go off then – and the oil light had never come on. But the next morning, having made it safely to Milton the evening before with nothing more serious than a fatigue hangover, I got back in the car to take Dad for some blood work, and the Christmas light situation had disappeared. All good. Go figure.

On our way to and from the clinic out on Route 24, Dad and I talk about the world and how and why it is so fractured. We also talk about quantum physics, his latest interest. (Fun facts: Quantum physicists believe that the concept of time is fundamentally not real.) And he tells a couple of his famous jokes. Dad’s hearing is terrible and he is very wobbly on his feet – two more falls and lots of scratches on his arms and legs since I saw him last. He says he knows his executive functioning isn’t what it was, and with the side effects of his medications and his heart not pumping properly, he has a hard time getting motivated to do anything. Decisions and actions take much longer. But his bright intellect is still very much shining. And he loves to talk. So a car chat is ideal. We talk about Israel and faith and history. He says in his 93 years, he's never been more worried for what generations behind him will inherit. It is frightening, I think. Who knows what will happen?

It occurs to me that we are all driving blind. But it is better with company.

🌊 🌊 🌊

Read more in the Dad Chronicles:

Dad and the Bean Box

Taking a Back Seat

The Power of Pansies and The Peace of Wild Things

You Can Go Home Again, If You Pack Lightly