God Bless The Roads
by Jenny NoblE
I used to be such a good driver. Even the DMV thought so. Like many San Franciscans, I grew up driving windy mountain roads at an early age and parallel parking on steep hills with a stick shift, no less. I drove all the time and without giving it a second thought.
Then I drove in Ireland. Instantly, I became that notoriously bad Nervous Driver. I was reduced to a shaky, egoless, mountain of jello. For the first time, my twelve and fourteen year old kids did not fight over who got the front seat.
I knew there was a problem before we made it out of the Hertz parking lot. “How do I turn the car on?” I asked the startled attendant. “You push the ON button”, he replied. Then he explained that the car actually was on but that I just couldn’t hear it. ‘Who can?’ I wondered. Wood nymphs? Horse whisperers? Hertz employees? Maybe this really was the Enchanted Isle.
It turned out that if you idle for more than ten seconds, the car engine would die and then re-ignite once you tap the gas pedal, “so it only sounds like you’ve stalled,” he tells me cheerfully. This didn’t bode well for a two week road trip around Ireland.
And there were little things. Remembering to use diesel. Outdated maps. Suddenly opening the car door when I meant to be a reaching for the stick shift. The roads were so small that when two cars met head on, they had to decide who would back up into the nearest, far-away driveway.
Within the first three hours of leaving the parking lot, we got into a car accident. Actually, I got into a car accident. My kids, who didn’t have any obvious wounds, just looked at each other, possibly too terrified to criticize my driving. I had accidentally turned the wrong way down a tiny narrow lane during a small town rush hour and in the blinding rain. As cars were honking and I was frantically trying to turn around, my depth perception was thrown off and I backed into a phone pole, crushing the rear fender. But really? Who puts phone poles in the middle of the street, anyway?
Why did some people insist on calling this the “other side” of the road, when it was so obviously “wrong”? I could handle this wrong side of the road and turning into the wrong lane and having to look the wrong direction when turning. It was sitting on the wrong side of the car that pushed me over the edge. Driving from what my brain assumed to be the passenger seat, meant feeling as if I was in the center of the road, while continually veering into a ditch or mossy stone wall.
It also looked as if every car coming at us was about to kill us in a head on. As I blundered along, my kids’ hysterical screams would warn me that I’d almost hit parked cars. Or grazing sheep. Or an angry farmer. The harder I tried to be a good driver, the worse I got.
I didn’t need a How’s my driving? bumper sticker to encourage people to share. At one point, lost on yet another no longer charming country road, a woman pulled up next to me and screamed “Whaj'ya doin? You’re going to get yar selves killed!” I wish I’d had a Student Driver pumper sticker.
Ireland has lovely scenery, according to my children. As I learned to appreciate the hues of grey in the pavement, I would hear things like, “Look at that castle!” and “I can see the ocean!”
Though we lived through that first night, all I wanted was to eat comfort food, drink comfort Ale and sleep forever. Maybe it would have been smarter to ditch the car and do a walking tour around Ireland with our rolling suitcases on our backs. Or convince my children that to discover the “real” Ireland, one had to spend two weeks in pubs all day listening to locals tell stories. Or we could spend two weeks reading James Joyce.
Instead I had to buck up, calm down and learn to drive. Bit by bit, driving got easier as I conquered the fear that I never knew I had.
Our final weekend, on Easter Sunday, we went to a church service with lilies and lots of Catholic pageantry. Very high church. The elderly priest closed the sermon with a prayer. Not for the poor or down trodden or for world peace. He beseeched the congregation, “…As hard as we try to do the right thing, we continue to struggle with driving and the roads. There’s nothing that saddens me more than showing up at some poor mother’s doorstep, pressing the knocker, and having to look her in the eye with tragic news. So please watch your driving on this Easter Sunday. And God bless the roads!” Yes! I was vindicated…unless, as Carley pointed out, everyone in town was afraid of me and had coached their priest into giving this sermon.
Finally, having overcome my fear of driving, I’d developed a new fear: Fear of returning the car. When we pulled into Hertz, only to be greeted by How-do-you-turn-the-car-on guy, I had concocted a litany of half-baked excuses and ways to engender sympathy. Before I could even get through the first 23 of them, he gave me a broad grin. “Do you think you’re the first Yank ever to get in a car accident in Ireland?”