In a Fog

Last week I went into Dallas to order a new custom-made sleeve to support my swollen right arm.  Afterwards I lingered too long looking at the Valazquez portraits at the Meadows Museum.  I drove out into a city with such poor street lighting that it was as black as New York after Sandy’s flood.   

In the center lane on Northwest Highway I was completely surrounded by speeding cars.  I drove mile after mile, pressing down on the accelerator as I tried to keep up with the car in front of me, while a pickup loomed up like a black monster in my rear view mirror.  No chance of moving into the right lane, as lines of cars sped. forward just as fast in that lane, too.  As miles and minutes passed and my terror mounted, I thought, “Maybe I’ve died and gone to Hell.”   Hell for me would be to spend eternity trapped in speeding traffic.   

I’ve been in frightening driving situations before.  On another black night I listened to travelers’ warnings on the radio as I drove across the New Mexico dessert on an icy highway barely visible through blowing snow.  No one else was so foolish as to be on the Interstate on such a night, and if I had slid off the highway and crashed, there were no lights on the horizon to indicate even one remote ranch house to go to for help.

That night in New Mexico, I was alone and in a deep depression.  I didn’t care what happened to me.  I did not see that in the coming years I would have a great, wonderful, happy life.

On a terrifying night in Germany, Karl and David were with me, and I was responsible for their lives.  After we left the Romantic Road and went through the mountains to the autobahn, we ran into fog.. I hesitated on the ramp leading down to the highway.  Karl said, “Mother, you drive like a little old lady.”

“Karl,” I said, “I am a little old lady.”

I took a deep breath and pushed my foot down as hard as I could.  A deep, white blanket of fog  concealed everything except two little red spots of taillights as Mercedes and BMW’s sped past me.  I tried to follow those bits of red lights.  They were the only guides I had to curves in the highway through the mountains.  But the speeding cars disappeared into the fog.  I crept along in at 80 mph and prayed that any German in a Porsche going 125 would see my feeble little taillights before crashing into me. 

There was no way I could get off the highway and wait for the fog to clear.  Karl had to report to the Army in Frankfurt the next morning.

I drove for hours in that thick potato soup of fog, hours of constant fear and terror.  The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see the exits at Frankfurt.  I missed the right turnoff, and we had to work our way back through the city to drop Karl at his barracks after midnight. 

They say, “God protects fools and little children.”   I am not a child.  But what do you think of an 83-year-old woman who has had the experiences I’ve had and continues to endanger the lives of herself and others by driving at night in rush hour traffic?