BLOG: Drive-By Mom

As a kid in the 70s, for me a car ride was an adventure in comparison to today’s object of getting my kids from point A to point B as quickly and safely as possible.  When I drive by something, by the time I shout “wow look at that...” to my kids, “it” has been missed due to their pre-teen and teenage noses being buried in an I-Touch or the latest text.

But thanks to my father, who always managed to point something out on the side of the road even on the shortest drives and even if it was only a groundhog, I have managed to retain a level of wonder as I drive my daughter to a riding lesson in the afternoon or my son to school in the morning. 

I think the roadways of Severna Park somehow sparkle with life at sunrise and again late in the afternoon when the sun is casting it’s long winter shadows. Each neighborhood, home, shop, person, or even tree cluster I pass whispers something to me about itself. I notice everything.  OK, maybe not everything.

It’s the little things that I love to wonder if anyone else notices?  There’s the school crossing guard at the corner of Jumpers Hole and Benfield Road. She’s in her senior years, but every morning and afternoon she walks to and from her post at a fast and determined clip. I watch and admire her in hopes that I will have that stamina when I reach her age.  It truly comforts me to see her there.

As I wind around Benfield and make my right turn onto Evergreen Road, I know I am in for a treat on the corner when the array of pastel colored chairs in front of Quayle and Company Design & Build brings me, for just an instant, to my favorite south Florida beach and I can somehow hear the bubbling sound of their potted fountain. 

Just before we reach the B&A trail on Evergreen and right at the Severn School crosswalk there’s “That Tree”, as my daughter calls it.  I think it’s a birch but can’t be sure.  It dances on the right and above the car’s moon roof and its trunk provides a speckled palate of earth colors that keep me staring long enough to get honked at through the stop sign. 

At sunrise on school mornings I am turning right onto B&A Blvd. just in time to catch the earliest runners as their strong lungs breath clouds of ice into the winter air.   I can’t decide whether I like them or envy them as I analyze my own workout routine and wonder…and wonder some more.