On the road again

My mother, with a little help from God, is getting her sweet revenge.

When I was a kid in high school, my mother would have to regularly pick me up from cross country or track practice. Our coach would end practice in the early evening and like clockwork my mother would be there to pick me up. My high school was a good 20 minutes away from my house, so she would easily spend up to an hour in the car each night because of me.

Oh sure, I carpooled with other kids on my team and we all took our turns, but she still spent more nights out of the week picking me up from somewhere than not. I’m sure she would’ve loved to have spent the little free time she had in the evening after a long day of work doing something else, okay anything else, like tinker in her garden or simply pamper herself with a bath, but she was still there for me.

In fact, out of all the pee-wee football, baseball, cross country, track practices, school plays, SAT practices and tests, and social get-togethers, I can’t remember her ever being late or missing a pick-up. (When I was old enough to drive, I would drive myself home from practice, but that was only on the rare occasions when my mom didn’t need her car and I didn’t have enough money to buy a junker of my own.)

What comes around, goes around

Now fast forward to today when I found myself getting up in the wee hours of the morning to drop my son off at the gym so that he could lift weights. He got into the habit of working out with his brother last summer and is trying to keep it up. Hence, he came to me the night before and asked if I would take him. How could I say no?

When the alarm went off, I yawned and I thought about rolling over. God knows I could use the extra sleep, but I couldn’t get the image of my mother picking me up all those years ago. I don’t recall her saying much in the car, but she was always there, rain, snow, sleet or shine.

Later in the day, with sleep still heavy in my eyes, I went to pick up my son again, this time from his school and then two days later I had to drop him off at a third place. Of course, I’m luckier than my mom was, we live much closer to my son’s school than I lived to mine.

I’m convinced though that my mother asked God to curse me with children just like me.