Our Last Summer
I just found these pictures on Maggie’s phone recently. She always takes the most interesting pictures and when I look back at them it makes me remember exactly what we were doing and talking about at the time. I wonder what inspired her take these pictures. They are of Alex practicing driving a stick shift, driving towards the sunset (Tom’s favorite thing) with our final destination being Dewey’s, an ice cream stand in Farmer City.
So, this Spring I bought a convertible (AKA the Fun Car). Tom wasn’t totally on board with it, but said he supported my “midlife crisis” decision. I had recently been in that weird, underlying panic moms get, which I call Mom Anxiety. It’s the countdown of years, months, weeks, days you have until your kids move out. I had been feeling anxious about time and nervous that we weren’t going to have enough of it. I thought that this might be a really fun way for us to just BE together. I wanted ALL four of us to be in the car together, eating ice cream, listening to the radio, driving towards the sunset and talking . Really talking, like you can only do when your kids are held captive in the car with you.
He thought I was being a little ridiculous, but eventually said okay. He said I would have to do all the work myself, because he hated the car buying process. I think he thought that I wouldn’t go through with it if I had to do it alone.
I found one I liked when he was away on a business trip and bought it.
Although, we had agreed that we would get a Fun Car this year, he was a little surprised that I actually did it. He took it for a spin and said it was “okay”. (He must’ve been jet-lagged). I was afraid I messed up, maybe in my Mom Anxiety frenzy I pushed him into something he was uncomfortable with.
A few days later he drove the Fun Car on our weekly date. It’s a manual transmission, and (I thought) we were both a little rusty at it. However, he zoomed right along, smooth as silk! He went through all the gears. We were going a little too fast, the radio was a little too loud, the top was down, and we were having a blast!
He yelled to me over all the noise, “I am SO glad you bought this car!! I forgot how to have FUN!!” I was SO happy that he was SO happy! We had so much fun this summer with the Fun Car. He would make up any excuse to drive it.
Wednesday was a beautiful 50 degree Autumn day. I thought I should take the Fun Car out just to charge the battery since I haven’t driven it for a while. I wasn’t really in the mood for it. But, as I was zooming along going 0-60 in 5 seconds (I don’t know, I made that part up), shifting through the gears, listening to the radio, I felt a smile form and I thought to myself “I am so glad I bought this car! I forgot how to have FUN!!” And then I swear, as Randy Travis was singing about his love being deeper than the holler, a smidge of a rainbow peaked through a couple of clouds. A little “Right on! Time to have some FUN!!” from Tom perhaps?
Anyway, my Mom Anxiety was off just a bit. It wasn’t time with the kids I wasn’t going to have enough of.
It’s funny how God gives you signals and you use them how YOU think He meant them. You use them how it makes sense to you and how it’s convenient for you understand them.
I was right to be nervous about time, and somehow I knew we weren’t going to have enough of it.
Thank God I was close though- we had ALL Summer long of ALL four of us driving around in the Fun Car, eating ice cream, listening to the radio and driving to the sunset. 🌅