Memories of Driving

My mother in the Austin Healey

I started driving in 1966 when I was seventeen years old.  That is almost fifty years ago.  My first experiences were grim.  My father owned a 1964 Austin Healey 3000.  It was a  2-door roadster – a classic English sports car.  The engine was powerful.  The car could cruise at 100 mph.  It had little mirrors on the front fenders, a shiny chrome grill and black leather seats.  All my friends, especially the boys, were in awe of the car.  My family had picked it up in England.  We went there for a summer vacation when we moved from Eastern Canada to Philadelphia.  My father had the car custom made with a left hand drive.  Years later, my brother found the original bill of sale signed by Donald Healey.  

The next spring, before I turned sixteen, I was in a terrible car accident.  The car I was riding in missed a sharp left turn and crashed at high speed as the road veered left and we didn’t.  The car flipped onto its roof and hurtled down a steep embankment.  It landed, completely wrecked, on its roof.  It was a foggy night in the winter.  We were on an icy country road in southern Ontario.  I was asleep in the back seat beside my boyfriend when the car crashed.  The driver was a young man, likely less than 20 years old.  I didn’t know him; he was a college friend of my boyfriend.  His girlfriend was in the seat beside him.  We were on the way to a homecoming dance.  We never got to the dance.  We went to the hospital instead.

Miraculously, three of us just had bad bruises and minor cuts.  My boyfriend broke several ribs and had a concussion.  He had to stay in the hospital.  The other couple’s family lived in the town.  They drove me to a motel.  I went to bed at 2 am and slept fitfully.  The next day I went back to the hospital.  I talked to my boyfriend.  He was all bandaged up.  I called my parents long distance from a pay phone.  I told them what had happened.  I told them I was all right.  Just in a state of shock.  Over the telephone their voices sounded supportive and soothing.  I wanted to be at home but in those days the concept of changing a flight barely existed.  I stayed in the small town all weekend and flew home on Sunday evening.  I didn’t go to school the next day.  I was in 10^th grade.

That summer when I turned 16 I told my mother I wasn’t ready to learn how to drive.  I kept remembering the feeling of waking up when the car crashed and started skidding down the steep embankment.  I remembered someone pulling me out of the broken window.  I could still feel the crushed roof of the car pressing on me in the dark fog.  Every time I thought about driving I thought of the accident.  It took more than a year to get it out of my mind.  I kept remembering the hospital intake people asking me how many people died.  No one I said again and again.  That is lucky they kept saying.  The car was totaled.

But after another year passed I was ready to learn how to drive.  All my girlfriends were already driving.  Several of them even had their own cars and drove to school every day.  My father told me he would teach me in the Austin Healey.  On my first lesson, he took me to a stop sign at the top of a steep hill.  He told me to stop, wait until the traffic cleared and then cross the intersection.  I stalled the car at the top of the hill so many times I started to cry.  My father yelled at me every time I stalled.  Eventually he told me to get out of the driver’s seat and he would drive home.  I didn’t know how to balance the clutch and the accelerator.  The hill was so steep I kept slipping backwards.  The emergency brake was stiff.  I couldn’t hold it and release it and work the foot pedals.  He was so angry but I didn’t know how to drive.

When we arrived home my mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner.  I was in tears.  I told her I never wanted to drive the Austin Healey again and that I wasn’t willing to have my father teach me how to drive.  She looked at me.  She told me she would find a driving school to teach me.  I went upstairs and lay down on my bed and wondered if I would ever learn, let alone enjoy driving.

Later that spring the instructor from the driving school taught me how to drive.  He had an American sedan – a Chevrolet.  It had an automatic shift with the shifting handle on the steering column.  You just had to put it into drive and it didn’t stall out on a hill.  He took me to Fairmont Park in the afternoon when no one was there.  He was very calm.  We drove around the large parking lot for hours, stopping and starting, making left hand turns, making right hand turns, practicing U-turns.  After a few lessons he told me I was ready to take the test.

In those days you didn’t even drive on the road to get a driver’s license.  You went to the licensing office and drove around a big parking lot.  It looked like the one at the park.  You made a left hand turn.  You had to do a U-turn with no more than three back-ups.  I had practiced this so many times I thought I could do it in my sleep.  I got my license easily.  Later I learned how to drive my family’s Ford station wagon and even later I learned how to drive the Austin Healey.  My mother taught me how to balance the clutch and the accelerator.  She didn’t yell at me when I stalled the car.  She took me on the freeway and calmly explained how to change lanes and merge into the traffic.

It was lucky I learned these skills.  I enjoy driving.  I love the feel of shifting gears smoothly and hearing the engine accelerate.  I taught my two kids how to drive when they were teenagers.  I started in a parking lot.  Using a car with a standard shift.  I took them on the freeway on Sunday morning when it was completely empty.  We practiced left hand turns and stop signs on hills in a small town near Seattle after soccer games.  There wasn’t any yelling or crying.  We just spent the time together learning how to parallel park and back around a corner.  I have fond memories of the whole experience.  How very different.  Neither of my children has ever been in an accident.  I have never been in another accident.  Just the one in 1965.  That was enough.

Both my mother and father are dead now but my family still owns the Austin Healey.  My husband and I still own a standard shift car.  It isn’t an English sports car but it is pretty sporty.  Yesterday I was out running errands in our car.  It was raining, just after 5 o’clock in the afternoon and already quite dark.  I had finished my grocery shopping and I merged from the parking lot onto a busy street.  I let the clutch out smoothly and pressed the accelerator.  The motion seems so easy.  It is hard to remember not knowing how to do this.  But every time I am at a stop sign at the top of a hill I remember that first time.  Some memories just stick with you.

Bathrooms and Bike Rides

Me and Dubs

Last night my husband and I rode our bikes to the University of Washington basketball arena.  We cheered as the Husky men’s basketball team played their rival, the University of Oregon Ducks.  I got my picture taken with Dubs, the Husky dog.

It was a clear night and we were invigorated by the short bike ride.  The Huskies beat the Ducks but it was touch and go to the end.  An exciting game for sure.  I am not usually such a big sports fan but this week I am infected with Super Bowl fever.  Super Bowl fever is running rampant in Seattle.  Wherever you go, folks are talking about the Seahawks and telling everyone that they love Richard Sherman.  I am doing that too.

It isn’t only football and basketball that are occupying my time.  My husband and I are remodeling two bathrooms in our house.  We have lived in this house for almost 35 years.  The bathrooms are old and small.  They were built 30 and more than 50 years ago!  We built the 30-year-old one in a closet when our son was born!  The other bathroom was there when we bought the house in 1979.  It is also tiny.  When you sit on the toilet, your knees almost touch the door.  The tiles are falling off the walls.  It needs a lot of help.  Now that I am retired, I have time to re-do these bathrooms.  I just didn’t have time to deal with them in the past few years.

When I go online and read about designs for small bathrooms, the footprints I have are described as being perfect for a powder room.  But in our house we don’t need a powder room.  The bathrooms I am remodeling are the only bathrooms.  They may be small but they need to be full service.  These bathrooms are workhorses – one is the bathroom that my husband and I use every day.  It has to accommodate a shower – we’ve given up on the bathtub concept.  There simply isn’t room.  The other bathroom, located in a daylight basement, is equally important.  We have both a large family and many out of town friends who stay with us on a regular basis.  The basement bathroom is the only bathroom available to these folks – some of whom stay with us for weeks at a time.  This bathroom is also too small for a tub but it needs a shower.

I am not complaining here.  I am just figuring out how to maximize function in small spaces.  This challenge suits me just fine.  I believe that we should all try to live in smaller spaces.  There are a lot of us in the world and if we all live in great big houses– there won’t be enough room.  In fact what happens is that some folks end up having great big spaces and others have no space at all.  If those of us who have a choice used less space that might be a good idea.  Of course deciding how to remodel a bathroom is what one of my friends calls a first world problem – there are many people in the world who don’t have any bathroom or even access to potable water.  But while I can’t solve this problem (I can help a little bit through supporting organizations like Dining for Women), I still think it is a good idea to live in small spaces.

Using less space to live in has other benefits too.  It helps preserve open space.  Open space is very important for growing food and trees and as a home for wild animals and plants.  It is also important so that we can all get out of built up areas and enjoy nature.   Whatever you do, just being in open space and breathing fresh air is good for you.  It relaxes you and calms your mind.  It re-connects you to the earth.  Cities are exciting and stimulating but people need nature.  It is also important to preserve natural systems to ensure that there is plenty of land to store and purify water, to keep the atmosphere clean and to preserve species diversity.  You may think it is crazy to equate small bathrooms to preserving the world but I don’t.  These things end up being connected – just like the old song – the hipbone’s connected to the leg bone…. 

One thing about living in the same house for more than 30 years – you have another opportunity to replace something you replaced before.  I guess houses are like that.  They need maintenance.  Sometimes maintenance isn’t enough and the parts have to be replaced.  That is where I am.  Bodies need maintenance too.  You can’t just replace failing body parts like you can replace a broken toilet!  The only solution for bodies is to keep maintaining them.  With the exception of a few parts like hips and knees, replacement isn’t a viable option. 

Realistically this is a good thing.  In addition to researching products and designing my new bathrooms, I have been maintaining my aging body.  That also takes a lot of time but it can be a lot of fun.  This weekend my husband Jeff and I had two wonderful bike rides.  The air was clear and cold and the scenery was spectacular.  We hadn’t ridden outside for a long distance in a long time.  We were out enjoying nature! 

We were on Lopez Island with our favorite road bikes.  We dressed warmly and cruised through winter fields and along coastal roads.  We rode by hedgerows, rocky beaches and through deep woods.  We passed fields with horses and cattle grazing in their thick winter coats.  We saw eagles and great blue herons.  We saw flocks of ducks – beautiful hooded mergansers – drifting on icy looking water.  We saw the sunset light the sky and the water in a glow of pink and orange and red. 

I wrote a haiku to remember our winter ride:

Biking on Lopez

Hedgerows and red rose hips glow

In white winter light. 

We felt lucky to be able to ride our bikes in such a wonderful place.  Our legs are strong from all the workouts and weight training we did in Brazil.  Road biking is a wonderful middle age sport.  It isn’t stressful on your joints.  It is great exercise.  You feel like a kid again, racing down hills with the wind in your face.  You come home tired and happy and in January, in the Pacific Northwest chilled.  We lit the wood stove and ate hot chili to warm up our bones.

We are looking forward to the Super Bowl!

Kaw Kaw! Go Hawks!

Last Sunday the local American football team – the Seattle Seahawks – played the New Orleans Saints.  I don't have to tell you that they won this quarterfinal game.  They are moving ahead against their arch rival the San Francisco 49ers - one step closer to the Super Bowl.  I am a football fan only by association – association it turns out with my husband, my son and most of North America’s population.  In my childhood, I went to college football games with my best friend.  We lived in a small town in eastern Canada.  My friend’s dad was the university football coach.  At the time I had no idea what a big deal that was.  He was a hero to most kids in town but to me he was just my best friend’s dad.

The football stadium was near our house. From September to November, Saturday afternoons were centered on the football game.  The university had three different colleges – arts and sciences, engineering and medicine.  Each of the colleges had a different color – red for arts, yellow for engineering and blue for medicine.  Having been founded by the Church of Scotland, the university had many Scottish traditions.  On football Saturdays, the students, mostly men in those years (1958-64), wore short kilts and tam o’shanter caps.  All the caps sported the traditional fluffy pompom on top in the appropriate color.   The plaid of the caps and kilts was predominantly red, yellow and blue – the university colors.  To this day, in my mind’s eye, I can see the long white legs – often skinny and always hairy – of the young men parading through town towards the stadium sporting their kilts and caps proudly. 

I had no idea or understanding of the game of football.  My family was English and knew nothing about the North American game.  First downs; punts; field goals; point after kicks; all were Greek to me.  I did know that you got points for a touchdown but I am not sure I recognized the point after option.  In my memory a touchdown was worth seven points, not six.  No matter.  The games were a wonderful spectacle – not to be missed.  I remember cruising around the stadium with my friend as if we owned the place…sitting in the student section; climbing up into the faculty section (my dad was a professor at the University); standing on the sidelines near her dad – a privilege reserved for the connected few.  Hard to imagine having that sort of freedom as a pair of eleven-year-old girls in today’s world.  I even remember parading down main street following the band and the guys in short kilts after winning games.  Now that was really fun!

My family left Canada for the United States in 1964.  I attended an all girls’ high school and an all girls’ college.  Football, with the exception of a few dates in high school with the quarterback of a neighboring boys’ school, was not part of my teenage and college experience.  In my twenties I was a bit of a nerd.  I spent my Saturday afternoons hiking and kayaking in the mountains or sometimes even studying in the library!  I didn’t own a television.  I didn’t know that football, both the college and professional variety, was becoming big business.

Some years later, I fell in love and moved across the country to Seattle.  My future husband already had season tickets to the University of Washington football team – the Huskies.  He was a serious fan.  On Saturday afternoons in the fall, we walked to the stadium, jostled through the eager crowd and cheered the Huskies to victory.  We ate hotdogs and yelled until we lost our voices.  Those were the glory days of Don James.  One year we went to the Rose Bowl and cheered crazily while the Dawgs (as the Husky teams are called) beat the pants off the University of Iowa.  We sat enthralled, watching the sunset over the Pasadena hills, proudly wearing our purple and gold.

I have been a Husky football fan for more than thirty years.  I am a pretty analytical person and I have figured out some of the game’s strategy.  We’ve had some pretty bad years and never enough good years.  Regardless I am a faithful fan.  I have attended the opening of two new Husky Stadiums including last year’s when the team entered through a cheering corridor of the men and women who built the new stadium!  I have a full purple and gold outfit…I even have Husky earrings that I only wear to Husky games.  So finally, in my sixties, I understand the fever pitch of football fans.

When my son was in high school he became a rabid Seahawks fan.  Over the years, whenever the Seahawks played the Monday night football game, he invited his buddies over.  I barely knew who the Hawks were, but I dutifully served up oven-fried chicken and crispy potato skins.  I can still see the big, rather ungainly teenage boys sprawled in my TV room, sneakers off and sweat socks stinking.  But they were cheering and laughing and basically having fun.  Now my son and his wife live in Oakland.  They are serious Seahawks fans.

This week, the Seahawks dominate the local news media.  They are talking about them on Sports radio and on NPR.  Everyone is thinking about Beast Mode and Marshawn Lynch the incredible running back.   Even my un-trained eyes can see this man is unusual.  It isn’t that he is so strong and so fast.  What makes him hard to beat is the amazing concentration he brings to his rushing.  When you watch this man you realize that his deep desire to move through the opposing team is just greater than that of his adversaries.  He literally wills himself forward. 

It is true that he is big and powerful and in the kind of physical condition that most people can’t even dream about.  But all of these strengths pale in comparison to his inner determination.  That is the strongest thing about him.  That is how he inspires his teammates.  That is why folks in Seattle love him.  He is Beast Mode.   He is also the founder of a charity in his hometown of Oakland California that empowers under-privileged youth.  That is the kind of beast even a middle-aged woman can love.

There are many things about football that we can question – unfortunately I have watched young men suffer dreadful injuries as well as witnessing coaches and players engage in unethical, even illegal activities.  I know that the amount of money in both college and professional football is often hard to justify and that the risks to the players’ physical and mental wellbeing can be devastating.  But on a Monday night or a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, when your team is winning and the championship is within reach, you have to be dead or dull not to feel the thrill of football.  The color, the excitement, the competition, the strategy, the suspense, the noise – all of these things are just fun to be part of. 

You can bet I’ll be watching the Seahawks on Sunday afternoon.  I’ll be putting healthy eating aside and munching my hotdog and potato chips and enjoying a cold one.  Plenty of time for fiber after they win.

Kaw Kaw!  Go Hawks.

Saúde 2014

It is raining heavily outside.  It has been dark since just after 4:30 pm.  Water is running down my street, filling the downhill gutter with a moving mass of dirty rainwater and wet leaves.  I drove home from the Y, my Seattle gym, in dark pouring rain.  I was satisfied with my work-out but apprehensive in the thickening traffic and the poor visibility on the arterial.  After walking everywhere in Brazil I am still not used to driving in Seattle’s traffic.

This is the Pacific Northwest in January.  I’m beginning to understand snowbirds.  Taos and San Diego sound pretty tempting.  What happened to my Brasilian sunshine?  My daughter, who is in graduate school in Southern California, kids me about eating lunch outside in shirtsleeves.  I only wish.

I‘ve made my new year’s resolutions.  I am trying to accomplish them everyday.  Today I got my exercise done.  It included a 30-minute intervals (high resistance alternating with lower resistance) session on an elliptical trainer where I kept my heart beat up above target for more than half the time; a full weight training session pulled from my trainer in Brasil that focused on hamstring and glut (butt) muscles followed by five different stacked and free weight upper body and arm exercises – all done in sets of three by fifteen repetitions; a mat session of core exercises – mixing it up with traditional crunches, leg raisers, bicycling, and full body lifts; and finally a good slow series of stretches – legs, arms, back, neck, shoulders, quads and calves.  Stretching is really important as you age.  Don’t forget it.  The whole thing took me an hour and a half or more and I drank a full bottle of water during the session. 

At 64 I need to make a daily commitment to exercise if I am going to live independently in my seventies and eighties.  I want to be able to carry my trashcan out to the street, work in my garden and carry heavy things up and down stairs.  This is just practical.  If I don’t have strength as I get older, I will not be able to do basic activities…things as simple as putting out the trash or moving the vacuum cleaner around.  Let alone go for a walk in a beautiful place.  I watched my mother-in-law lose those abilities during her eighties.  I want to do what I can to avoid losing these basic skills as I age.

My husband thinks I don’t need to worry about what will happen twenty years from now.  I disagree.  I want to be ready.  With physical strength you have to do it all the time especially as you get older.  My husband knows this – he is at a spinning class right now.  If anything, he is likely more nutty about keeping up strength, flexibility and aerobic capacity than I am.  Either way we both enjoy working out and even working out together. 

We spent the New Year’s week up on Lopez Island and biked around its glorious fields and beaches.  On our last day we rode our bicycles under cold blue sunny skies.  We decided to stop at a local shellfish farm and buy clams for dinner.  That was at the 30 + mile mark.  It was almost 4 pm and the sun was dropping low in the sky.  We bought our clams; put them into a thick plastic bag and into the daypack.  We jumped on our bikes.  We were FROZEN!  My hands felt like little blocks of ice and my feet were no better. 

We had more than 6 miles left to cycle.  The sun was so low in the sky I couldn’t see it but the clouds were coloring up – rosy and orange.  I pushed my pedals as fast as I could – racing to get warm again.  Jeff was racing behind me and we took the shortest route home.  As we neared the last corner we could see the final dip of the winter sun across the San Juan straits.  The clouds lit the sky brilliantly.  It was a spectacular sunset – I feel so lucky to have the strength to bicycle in this beautiful part of the world.  When I did my hamstring exercises today at the Y, I thought about how these inside exercises enable the outside exercises.  It is well worth it for now.  Not just for when I am in my eighties.  For right now!  But I hope to still be biking and walking beaches in my eighties.  

Last night two of my writing friends came over for dinner.  I wanted to cook something warm and delicious.  I had the Cook’s Illustrated All-Time Best Italian Recipes (http://www.cooksillustrated.com) 

on my coffee table.  I chose to make the Chicken Cacciatore recipe.  It is SO good.  Basically the recipe is chicken thighs; Portobello mushrooms; onions; garlic; salt; pepper; thyme and a secret ingredient cooked in red wine and broth.

Try it tonight.  It is easy and I would never have guessed the secret ingredient…by the way one reason I keep exercising is that I love cheese…especially parmesan and pecorino…guess what the secret ingredient is?  It is likely sitting in your fridge right now.  It was in mine.  Ok  …I’ll tell you: it is a piece of Parmesan rind.  Don’t tell me you don’t have this in your fridge.  If you don’t, go next door and ask your neighbor to lend you some!

The recipe is available on the Internet in a couple of different places.  It is an easy recipe and you don’t have to be a skilled cook to make it.  Here is a good source:

http://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/348489115/chicken-cacciatore-with-portobellos-and-sage/

The bottom line: buy eight chicken thighs…the best you can find.  Buy three big hunky Portobello mushrooms.  Make sure you have some good red wine.  Follow the recipe but I suggest you don’t skin the thighs…I trimmed the fat and just left the skin on.  That is a lot easier….  I figured if my guests wanted to remove the skin they could.  BTW no one did.  I also baked the dish covered in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit…that is easier for me than stovetop.  Just don’t have to worry about the simmering.  But I did turn the thighs over at about 30 minutes.  Do that.  The other change I made was to add chopped up rosemary at the end instead of sage.  The sage in my garden is at the back and it was pouring with rain and too dark to see it.  I have a big rosemary bush right by my front door so I used that instead.  Fresh herbs make all the difference.

So what do you serve it with?  Good question.  There was no advice in the recipe in the magazine or on line.  I needed a whole dinner, not just the main course.  Here is what I did and it was delicious.  Make mashed potatoes and rutabaga (together).  I used Idaho russets and nice big rutabagas peeled and washed.  Remember rutabagas are those yellow/purple things that look a bit like turnips.  I peeled them and cut into uniform pieces and then cooked both potatoes and rutabagas together in salted boiling water.  I mashed the soft veggies in a heavy warm pan (the one I cooked them in) with plenty of salt, pepper, butter, chicken broth and a little milk.  It was seriously tasty especially with the wine gravy and the chicken.  We ate it all with a big winter greens salad…kale, arugula, mizuna, and baby spinach.  Dressed with lemon vinaigrette.  Try it.  You will be a happy camper.

So – despite the rain and the cold – it is good to be back in the Pacific Northwest.  It is great to see my friends and family and cook up winter food.  I am trying to hang in the moment – eat right, stay strong and write.

Saúde!  Cheers to you in 2014!

Fisherman's Bay, Lopez Island, Washington, USA