For two weeks, Gary drove his van on our Circle Tour around Lake Superior. He would deny this, but I had no real choice in where we went. He was in command.
Is there a woman who never had the experience of planning on seeing some road side attraction only to have her man drive past it and then say, oops, we missed it, and go on? In my mother's box of photos, I found many blurred trip pictures and thought, why keep them? Now I see she had to shoot pictures of places while the car was moving.
There are places I might liked to have seen on our trip: waterfalls, a lighthouse, a cove. One day I wanted to go to someplace and Gary asked me what I would do there. "I don't know," I said, and he thought that wasn't a good answer, but isn't serendipity the heart of a trip? I like the unusual, the complete surprise but you don't find that until you go off route.
My last performance of the tour was at a retirement home in Sault Ste Marie. I asked the women about their experiences. They were the same. One after another had a story to tell about her husband driving past places she would never get to visit.
Today, I got into my own car and took off to do errands around Seymour. I didn't come home for two hours. I found more and more places I wanted to go, even if they were local. That car was freedom.
Now, I think about my old age. At some point, I will have to surrender my driver's license and depend on others to take me where I want to go. What will that be like? Could I live without my freedom? As long as I could keep walking I would be fine. As long as I could take a wheelchair for a spin, I would be fine. But when that is gone?
Every nursing home has an alarm system for residents who try to escape. That would be me. The idea of being locked away is abhorrent to me, even if those in charge have the best intentions.
I think I will start investigating how to disable alarms.
Is there a woman who never had the experience of planning on seeing some road side attraction only to have her man drive past it and then say, oops, we missed it, and go on? In my mother's box of photos, I found many blurred trip pictures and thought, why keep them? Now I see she had to shoot pictures of places while the car was moving.
There are places I might liked to have seen on our trip: waterfalls, a lighthouse, a cove. One day I wanted to go to someplace and Gary asked me what I would do there. "I don't know," I said, and he thought that wasn't a good answer, but isn't serendipity the heart of a trip? I like the unusual, the complete surprise but you don't find that until you go off route.
My last performance of the tour was at a retirement home in Sault Ste Marie. I asked the women about their experiences. They were the same. One after another had a story to tell about her husband driving past places she would never get to visit.
Today, I got into my own car and took off to do errands around Seymour. I didn't come home for two hours. I found more and more places I wanted to go, even if they were local. That car was freedom.
Now, I think about my old age. At some point, I will have to surrender my driver's license and depend on others to take me where I want to go. What will that be like? Could I live without my freedom? As long as I could keep walking I would be fine. As long as I could take a wheelchair for a spin, I would be fine. But when that is gone?
Every nursing home has an alarm system for residents who try to escape. That would be me. The idea of being locked away is abhorrent to me, even if those in charge have the best intentions.
I think I will start investigating how to disable alarms.
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