my saturday morning was spent in a small white car with mrs. mary from the retirement community. and this time i really tried to do it right... but then again, you all know me don’t you?
my friend, sarah, usually drives mair-dog (which is mrs. mary’s ganster name that we call her sometimes because mair-dog is such a GANSTA in her talbot’s silk shirts and all leather coach purse).
anyway the gig is that you take mair-dog to her various and sundry weekly errands. but sarah was way too busy biking through north carolina to take mrs. mary this week, so i was the chosen driver. now i have driven mary before in sarah’s absence and i didn’t do so well (actually we don’t know how well i did because mary NEVER mentioned me to sarah after my saturday stint and we thought it was because i had made a “wrong” turn and thus condemned myself to forgettable status), so i was VERY motivated to be the PERFECT driver today...
mary was excited to see me and told me she remembered me from last time (SURE she did, no wonder she buckled that seat belt so fast when she was in the car).
let me go over some of the reasons why i FAILED MISERABLY in my attempt at being the perfect driver...
first of all, you have to drive mary’s car. a small car compared to my HUGE car and several times instead of putting the car in park, i turned on the windshield washers and wipers because that is where MY gear shift is... mary didn’t like the windshield wipers and washer going off because every time i did it she said, “but the window isn’t even dirty!”
you have to go at mary speed (and seeing as how the mair-dog is a decade shy of the century mark, you can imagine that my usual multi-tasking, speed walking, speed talking pace is not what she enjoys). she was slower than last time because she hurt her leg exercising last week. i would get out of the car and take off at lea speed for a step or two and then remember that i had to walk at mary speed.
you have to drive and make the turns mary wants to take even if you know of 46 faster ways to get to the drugstore, dry cleaner, grocery store, bank, and hair appointment. and you know that i know 46 faster ways and sometimes i go on auto pilot and then i go a way that is not the mary approved way.
now i have to say that i do have a TON of fun driving mair-dog as she always has great stories from the nursing home and i tend to get distracted by her story and today that made me totally MISS the dry cleaner and mary was upset about that because now we are off of the routine. i also forget to turn where she wants to turn and even though it leads us to the EXACT same road, again she is thrown off her routine.
i am not a good saturday driver. i will not be expecting a good report when sarah drives her next week. oh well, i will have reached forgettable status once again.
but we did get all things accomplished and got her back to her room with new prescriptions, food, drycleaned silk talbots shirts, money in her wallet, and a fresh head of hair.
and i had a wonderful morning, moving slowly, driving carefully, really listening to a woman talk about her grown children, her husband who is in heaven, her friends at the nursing home and tell the same stories 3 times durning the drive. i suppose that what i spent saturday morning was to truly serve God by serving mrs. mary...
james 1:27 religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress...
so i guess it was pure and faultless to God, even though i missed the dry cleaners that first time around and went straight at the stop sign. i am all about that grace and mercy, people...
i am also available to drive you to your errands on saturday mornings again, mair-dog, IF you will let me...