With so much going on recently (like getting married!), it’s been such a long time since I’ve posted, but it feels nice to be back. Though writing a post is always a bittersweet experience for me, this blog has become something I cherish; expressing and sharing my love for my mom is something I get a lot out of and have missed recently.

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt since starting this blog, it’s that the small things in life are sometimes the most significant. So many of the topics I’ve covered about my mom deal with the smaller details, the day-to-day stuff. It’s these details that make up my mom’s specialness and it’s these details that have defined our relationship.

With that context — today’s post is, simply, about driving with my mom. The backstory: Last weekend, Shaan and I were on a road trip going to a friend’s wedding. He drove the whole way — about three and a half hours — while I just took it easy in the passenger seat. (Side note: If this is what being married means, I’ll take it!)

While I was sitting there, I was reminiscing about how much I enjoyed being driven around by my mom. I’m specifically talking about her driving me even years after I’d gotten my driver’s license. Even though I could drive myself, my mom was doing it for me, and there was something comforting about that. It was just another way of feeling taken care of by her.

My mom knew I liked this, so when we were heading somewhere together and I would offer to drive, she would always sweetly tell me that she was happy to.

There are a few occasions I remember with special fondness from our times in the car together.

One was our daily car ride together on my way to work. After I moved back from London and got a job in San Francisco, my mom regularly dropped me off at the Pleasanton BART train station for my morning commute. We would listen to BBC World News Radio together until we reached the junction of Santa Rita Road and W. Las Positas Blvd., where  — every single time she dropped me — she would turn the radio off and pray for my day ahead. In this post from many months ago, I talked about how she would pray for me as we walked together on my way to work in London. Two years later, and even in the midst of her health challenges, my mom continued to pray for me in the same way, this time in the car.

Another, and more lighthearted, memory is of my mom using GPS voice commands in her car. This was before Google Maps got big and an inbuilt car GPS was the way to go. Her car wouldn’t let you input an address while driving unless you voice dictated it, so that’s what she would do, and it was quite the tedious process.

She’d first have to press a button on the steering wheel which would prompt her to say the name of the state; after that, she’d have to wait for the GPS to confirm the state. Then she’d speak the city name and wait for the GPS confirmation. Next, the same process for the street name; then, the street number. Probably half the time, the GPS would confirm the wrong street name or number and she’d have to start the process over. I’m not sure why she didn’t input the address on the touch screen before she started driving, which was far easier, but it worked for her! I should also add that my mom never did a great job following the GPS after all that work — the number of times she missed an exit…

Speaking of missing exits, another fun anecdote to share is one that can be distinctly categorized on this blog as a “(F)unlesson.” If you forgot what means you can read more here, but in simple words, please don’t attempt what I’m about to share with you.

Many years ago, my mom and I were cruising along the highway. Where we were going, what we were doing, I don’t remember — I was borderline traumatized after this car ride so may well have blacked out and forgotten the details (kidding). In actuality, this happened a long time ago and I just remember the big picture. Which started with us realizing we were in the midst of missing our highway exit. Now, usually when most of us miss our exit, we let out a groan of frustration and take the next exit. But not my mom — it’s never been in her personality to give up so easily.

Instead, as we literally passed by the exit, she swerved the car into the right lane. As the exit lane had already branched off, I presumed we were going to continue on to the next exit. Nope, I was wrong — my mom veered right and propelled us over the divider area between the rightmost highway lane and the exit lane. All of a sudden we were driving over a bunch of rocks — rocks that had presumably been placed in the divider to make it impossible for drivers to make an exit they’d already missed! And I’m not talking little pebbles; I’m talking full-on, jagged (or so I remember) rocks that we were bouncing across like we were four-wheeling through the Rocky Mountains.

In case you’re having trouble picturing, I’ve created a diagram to help illustrate:

Not to be deterred, my mom just kept maneuvering through as we braved through the rocky divide for about 10 seconds going at 50-odd miles per hour. The best part was that she acted like nothing unusual happened. There I was was shouting, “MOM ARE YOU CRAZY?!” while she casually bounced along in her driver’s seat until she’d steered us through, entered the exit late, and left the highway.

For years, we laughed about the ridiculousness of driving through the rocks together. It’s so typically my mom, which is why I love this story.

In writing this post, I realize I could just keep going with the car stories — there’s at least one more (F)unlesson to share and several more meaningful memories (who knew so much happened in the car?). But I think that’s enough reading for today, so stay tuned for a Part 2 in one of my future posts.

I’ll just wrap up by saying that in addition to these stories I’ve shared, there’s one more key reason why all this car stuff is special to me. It’s that I now drive my mama’s car. Every time I’m in the driver’s seat, I get brought back to the times she drove me around and all the special (and wild!) experiences we encountered together.