She's Good To Go
by Arlene Mandell - March 27, 2020
I HAD to ask my high-spirited, elderly mom to give up her car keys; with failing eyesight, she could not drive safely anymore. This was a crossroads of change. She was gloomy after that, hardly talking except to say she was angry with me for "putting the kibosh on the car." I told her she was still in charge of grocery shopping, reminding her that our supermarket had a motorized shopping cart. She could sit in it and drive, and tell me what to put in the basket.
Her face lit up: "Let's go NOW...we're out of milk!" Off we went to Winn-Dixie and a promising opportunity. There it was: a shiny new motorized cart. She was ready. A couple of false starts, then off and running at the vehicle's top speed like the fun-loving mom I used to know.
At my own peril, I walked in front of the cart to slow her down a bit and prevent her from running into unsuspecting shoppers who might not get out of the way fast enough. Up and down the aisles we went filling the cart, my mother in a state of bliss while I was anxiously on full alert, my eyes darting here and there.
With a nearly-full basket, we headed toward the front of the store for veggies, when an old friend spotted me and came over to chat. This distracted my attention completely -- a serious mistake. As we finished talking, I saw "Mario Andretti" heading full speed ahead toward the elaborate holiday display of imported wine bottles set up in front of the produce department. I shouted STOP...STOP!!! but she was going too fast to hear me.
However, the manager -- talking with a customer near the checkout registers -- heard me. His eyes caught mine as I pointed to the runaway cart in alarm. We both ran like bats-out-of-hell to head off disaster. In my mind I envisioned an explosion of bottles crashing and breaking into hundreds of bits, creating a huge mess on the floor and a large expense out of my pocket. Fortunately, we got there just in time, each of us grabbing a handle of the cart and with all our strength, slowing it down within inches of the endangered display.
Given the circumstances, the manager, knowing my mother as a loyal customer there for so many years, was amazingly tolerant, politely asking her to hold the speed down on the cart in the future. What a relief! I was afraid he'd forbid her to drive that cart ever again, and she'd go back to being a "gloomy-gus." We paid for our groceries and went home: me, shaken by the near-calamity, but my mother happy in the knowledge that she still had her most important job: buying the food to feed me.
The good advice mother often gave me was true: "When you can't do the thing you want, do the next best thing." She was the living, and driving, proof.
Copyright 2020, Arlene Mandell
Newland, NC