Standing in the Driveway

When I was a little girl, at the end of every visit at my Mamaw's we would get in the car to leave and she would stand there and wave until we were out of sight. Some of my strongest memories of her are standing in the carless driveway in her blue housedress.

They never had a car even though they lived in a part of the country where that was standard. Daddy had a car when he was a teenager but it had gone away to school with him. My Aunt Mary lived in the same town and would take them on errands that couldn't be accomplished by Papaw talking a long walk into downtown. I guess neither of them had ever learned how to drive. I'll never know the answer. There's no one left to ask.

I often wondered what it was like for her. We were off to different lives, sometimes on our way to vacations and new places, and she just stayed there. She had her garden, a utilitarian kitchen, a TV that received 3 stations, a 1950's era radio, sunny windows full of Coleus, and her snuff can. It seemed like a boring and empty life to a young child even though I loved to visit.

For a child it was a wonderland. There was a public pool at the top of the hill, two public parks within a block of the house, a grape arbor with an old kitchen sink to use as a playhouse, a garden to run through the rows, a plaster Mama Duck with her ducklings following behind, a deep front porch to sit in the shade and watch the cars fly by on their way to Winston Salem and Charlotte and Raleigh. There were boy cousins to torment, loving laps to cuddle in, and icey lemonade to drink. It was heavenly for a child, but even then it didn't seem like it would be enough for an adult.

Looking back I recognize that she had a serenity very few people have. She was a happy woman. There had been struggles and heartaches; she'd lost a husband, a son, and a teenaged grandchild. When she had remarried a man her people didn't approve of (he was divorced!) they never spoke to her again, a situation that went on for fifty years. That's more pain than a lot of people have in a lifetime but she seemed to have found peace with it all.

I guess I could say it was a simpler time but that's a lie we tell ourselves. The 'Good Old Days' were never as good as people who never lived them imagine. Any lifetime that spanned two World Wars, a Depression, Korea, Viet Nam, the Civil Rights struggle, and the Carter Administration wasn't 'simple'.

Those are also questions I'll never know the answers to. Those too lost to death and time. But the sight of her smile and wave will be with me as long as I have memories.