Over Easter weekend I drove my 75 year old mother from the Midlands to Perthshire in Scotland. She had recently reconnected with a dear friend & they had hatched a plan to get together. I offered to drive her, thinking the 6 hour door-to-door drive wouldn’t be shortened that much if we were to fly. It seemed like a good idea at the time, as these things usually do.
As the date for our departure grew nearer I began to feel increasingly nervous, no anxious at the prospect of spending 6 hours together in such a confined space. It had been many years since we had spent 6 hours consecutively together, of ours is not a close relationship, let alone within the confines of a Ford Fiesta. I briefly considered flying…until I costed it out. I wondered what on earth we would fill the airspace with. Someone suggested audio books – genius idea but the local charity shop only had audio cassettes & even my old banger isn’t quite that ancient.
So early on Good Friday morning, I got up & drove 45 minutes to pick her up, my halo strangling me at such an early start on a bank holiday. We set off soon after 9am. The first couple of hours flew by. In all honesty I rather monopolized the airspace for the first hour or so. That has rarely happened in my relationship with my mother, so it was somewhat liberating!
Then we hit traffic on the dreaded M6 & crawled along so slowly, until the GPS diverted me through a Birmingham suburb & back onto the M6 one junction down but saving us 90 minutes of inching slowly forward. We had barely gone 10 miles in 2 hours. Finally, everything started moving & we limped onto the first services for a much needed comfort break.
‘You go to the loo, Mum, I’ll grab some lunch, I’ll meet you at the car,’ I took charge. But after stocking up on M&S goodies, I decided I needed the loo too. I found mum coming out of the toilet & thrust the lunch goodies into her hands, ‘Go & have a fag, mum, I’ll meet you outside.’ She looked slightly bemused & then exclaimed, ‘Oh it’s you, I was just about to say, I’m meeting my daughter, it must be these bifocals.’ I couldn’t help chuckling that even though she thought I was a complete stranger, she’d happily taken the sarnies & crisps!
Thankfully the rest of the journey was relatively quick in comparison, in terms of mileage & hours but the 6 hour journey was actually over 9. And that’s where it was a lesson in patience. My mum, I realized as the miles ticked on is vague, very vague.
Now she’s never been a great listener, not one for ever being wrong or for sure never admitting to being so & definitely does not ‘do’ self-reflection. I will happily admit when I’m wrong, self-reflection is almost an obsession but I fear I have ‘caught’ the not-listening gene, so I am very mindful of this.
We literally had the same 4 or 5 conversations on loop every hour or so:
‘Should we turn round? I think we should go back?’ says mum
‘No, they’re expecting us, we’re not turning round, I don’t want to let anyone down.’
‘Well we shouldn’t stay, I think we should just have a cuppa & come home.’
‘Er, no Mum, I’m not driving for 10 hours to come home again today.’
‘Well we’ll leave tomorrow then?’
‘Ermm not so much, let’s stay til Sunday like we arranged, I think I’ll need a full 24 hours off driving.’
‘Who ARE we going to see?’
‘I think we should turn round…’
‘Let’s not stay long…’
‘When are we coming home?’
‘Oh yes the traffic will be better then.’
‘Will the traffic be better then?’
And so on and on and on
It was a long journey, a very long journey. And all the way I kept saying to myself: This is a lesson in patience. And: Don’t loose it for god sakes don’t loose it.
Thankfully when we got there the destination was so much more than the journey for once in life! It was wonderful reconnecting & despite the passing of decades it felt like yesterday since we’d last been together.
The return journey was exactly 6 hours, just as the GPS had foretold. Thank goodness. It was long enough for the constant loop: I’m not letting you talk me into such a long journey again (I didn’t like to say, actually Mum this was your idea…no I tell a lie, once I mumbled something to this effect, but she doesn’t listen so it went unheeded); oh the traffic’s much better in this direction isn’t it (don’t jinx it, please don’t jinx it); never again, it was so lovely, but never again.
In years to come I will no doubt reflect on these 15 hours together in my little fiesta with fond memories & even now smile at the constant repetition. It certainly was a lesson in patience.
During the next mindfulness & meditation workshop that I run weekly, one of my clients asked me how mindfulness & meditation had changed me. And I reflected that the changes are subtle but as CS Lewis once said, the changes seem small but on reflection are huge: there is no way 6 years ago before I practiced meditation & mindfulness that I would ever have survived 1 hour let alone 15 with my mother in such an intense situation without cracking. It has helped me develop such patience & acceptance & a wonderful ability to see the humour in even the most infuriating of circumstances.
It also caused me to reflect on the daily occurrences when we can practice patience: when we miss a traffic light, we can take the additional minutes to turn our attention inwards (not to meditate, obviously that would be a bad idea behind the wheel of the car) but instead of getting frustrated to appreciate the time to just come back to ourselves, to breathe, to be; the same in a traffic jam (ok 2 hours on the M6 to go less than 10 miles might push you, you may be able to stay patient, you may not necessarily relish the time, although of course in some ways I do, I relish the funnies it gave us, the constant loop of mild dementia in my passenger seat); the constant flow of chatter from our kids, the minutiae of detail that can be draining but of course if we don’t listen to & appreciate the little stuff they won’t tell us the big stuff. It’s all patience, a lesson in patience.
