Take the Long Way Home
Recently we experienced an incredible mix of sunny days and summer temperatures, unprecedented in Vermont. What a balm for a winter-battered soul! Last week records were broken, and this week we are returning to colder, rainier, cloudier April days. Sigh….
But this is not a blog about the weather. It’s about what I do when I need to escape from whatever is making me restless, which is sometimes gloomy weather, but is also sadness, a perplexing problem, too much stimulation, lack of balance, or a list of other catalysts that tell me to “get out of your own way, girl!”
That’s when I grab the keys and go for a drive.
Those drives felt life-saving in the Spring of 2020. During the pandemic, the car’s interior became a sacred space. When so much was locked down and felt both uncertain and dangerous, that front seat was a safe house. No masks were needed and no social distancing was required when you were alone with the open road. There was often very little traffic. Taking the scenic route or the “long way home” as we used to beg our dad to take when we were kids and didn’t want a Sunday drive to end, became a temporary treatment for a virus we knew little about that first spring.
That spring of 2020, my husband did most of the driving because I felt I had so much noticing to do. It felt like it was my calling to take in as much as I could of our fractured world. Houses were still standing, cars in driveways, children playing alone in their yards on what used to be called a school day. Storefronts were still there, minus the parked cars and daily foot traffic. So we drove. We drove to discover, and we drove to confirm. Life still existed.
Grass was greening, trees were budding, rivers were flowing, birds were doing their spring thing. Cows in pastures had no idea that the farmers were having to alter everything about the days that required them to leave their land. So they did what cows do, and that was immensely comforting during a time that we could not do what it was normal for us to do.
“Going for a ride” was a familiar tonic in our arsenal of coping with or enhancing our lives. Like millions of American families, we went for the popular Sunday drive in the 60’s. With the Blue Laws of Vermont, nothing much was open on a Sunday back then. So we hit the open road, my brother and I in the boat-sized backseat of our banana-colored Dodge. Whether it was standing on “the hump” to see ahead or talk to my parents, curling up into ball in the footwell, heads hanging out a roll-down window, or trying to see if we could lounge in the sunny warmth of the rear windshield, that backseat was its own amusement park on a Sunday.
Rustic roads, unfamiliar neighborhoods, and the city streets and rural roads where relatives resided were all fair game for a Sunday afternoon. If it was summer, we’d forgo the big car and I would get to ride in the back of the beat-up blue International Harvester Scout pickup. On the rutted back roads, I can remember leaning back, sun filtering through the leafy trees, and the sound of Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour'' coming from the radio in the front cab. You freeze a memory like that, one that is a mix of longing, dreaming, and pure contentment. That’s the remedy I try to replicate every time I go for a drive.
The need for the mind-clearing or adventure-seeking drive may be greater than ever. Covid continues to disrupt our lives, and will be with us, we are told, for a long time. With the desire to travel still on hold for many retirees due to various circumstances, a car trip, even a day-trip, or just short drives can feel so liberating. Just a change of scenery can promote creativity and greater optimism. In the blog post Top 5 Ways: How driving makes you happy and could also help you unlock your life post lockdown (featured by a global travel insurance company), the authors state that despite the tension of long drives to reach a particular destination, “this same long drive benefits positively when the drive is taken without any purpose or place to reach.”
They urge drivers to see the drive itself as the destination. In other words, the journey is the destination. They also note that going for a drive restores energy in a mood-changing way, de-stresses, and creates solitude. And they also acknowledge that being able to go for a drive is truly a luxury.
Going for a drive is a luxury I do not take for granted as I grow older. We know that driving is key to our independence as we age. But research also shows that women are more likely to give up driving in their golden years much earlier than men. Reading the research about aging women and driving can be a depressing territory to wade into, full of menacing “taking the keys away from grandma” advice – not what I was looking for. Mercifully, I feel far away from that scenario.
Right now in my life going for a drive is the same form of self-care it has been since I first learned to drive and relived the magic of the Sunday ride. That wonderful paradox of relaxing and focusing while on a drive, radio tuned to something nostalgic is helping me live compatibly with the past, present, and future. During The Precious Days, I plan to “take the long way home” for as long as I can.
For more information on the benefits of taking a drive, check out: Self-care Sunday’s: Taking a Drive.
Is going for a drive part of your self-care routine? Drop me a message in the comments below.
