Illustration by Drew Shannon
First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
The clerk barely looked up when I slid my driving licence across the counter. I’d rehearsed a small speech on the walk over – something about 65-plus years behind the wheel, about choosing this moment rather than having it chosen for me. But when the clerk reached for the card, I had nothing to say. She tapped something into her computer, nodded and that was it.
Outside, the air carried that magical scent of a low tide from a nearby shoreline. I stood on the pavement watching traffic flow along the high street, cars and trucks and delivery vans streaming past, and realized – from now on – I was just an elderly man on foot. The thought didn’t sting the way I’d expected. If anything, I felt lighter.
I was on my way to meet an old and treasured friend. When my son passed away from cancer, he was the first person at our door, walking in without a word straight into our kitchen where he put the kettle on.
He was in the coffee shop when I arrived, hat on the chair beside him, walking stick propped against the table. We had not seen each other for some time and I was startled by the back of his hands, mottled with age spots and blue veins. No different than mine. Both of us are now in our 90th year.
He turned to the young waitress so that his best ear, the left one, the one that still partially worked, could make some sense of what she was asking him. “Black coffee and a slab of your chocolate cake…” he said loudly, repeating himself until she nodded. Twenty years’ service in a Canadian artillery regiment, combined with old age, had done his hearing no favours.
“I’ve got a lady friend,” he shouted at me. “But she’s not much interested in the bedroom…”
I grinned, along with the couple at the next table. “Still leading an active life?” he asked.
“The odd cuddle,” I said, hoping we might move on. He frowned, cupping his ear. “What’s that?” he shouted.
“Muddle? You’re making no sense.”
By the third attempt I too was shouting.
Again, the café crackled with laughter. I sat there and then gave in to it – my laughter as loud as any in that coffee shop. Thankfully, the old soldier found something else to talk about.
“They want me to take a medical exam before they’ll renew my driving licence,” he said, carefully lifting his coffee mug. “But I’m perfectly capable.”
“Without wheels, I’d have to ask one of my grandchildren to drive me. They’d just fiddle with their phones or yammer on about stopping at McDonald’s.” He set his mug down. “The car isn’t about getting to Costco. It’s being in command of my own life.”
I knew I should tell him then – that I’d just come from the licensing office, that I’d handed mine in an hour ago. That I too had been hauled into a medical exam. But the words stuck in my throat. Part of me worried he’d see it as betrayal, as if I’d surrendered something he was still fighting to keep. Part of me worried he’d see it as weakness.
As for my old warrior friend, I knew what made him a perfect fit for the military might just keep him holding onto his keys. There had been a fierceness in his voice when he said he was “perfectly capable.”
“It’s easy for you,” he said, frowning. “You’ve got your wife to drive you about.”
I nodded, looking out the window. For two-or three-minutes my chum and I sat together in comfortable silence, our friendship worn like a loose garment.
We left the café separately. As he departed, his metal tipped cane tapped along the pavement. Then he stopped, grinned, gave me a crisp salute, turned the corner and was gone.
I’d spent days dreading handing over my license, imagining it as humiliation or defeat. But standing there, licence-less and carless, I felt something unexpected: relief.
Rain was forming puddles on the pavement. I felt no urgency to get anywhere. I had no schedule to keep, no destination that required wheels. By the time I reached home, I was soaked through. My wife met me at the door.
“How do you feel?” she asked. I thought about it. About 65-plus years of driving reduced to a card sliding across a counter.
“Free,” I replied.
John Pendray Manning lives in North Saanich, B.C.