A Daffodil Blooms in November
The Smith Ladies ride in our cabs, and have apparently done so since well before my taxi tenure began. Sometimes they shop, sometimes they venture out for a meal together. The Smith Ladies are mother and daughter, exceptionally pleasant women both… the kind of people whose existence provides a simple, elegant pleasure to all who might encounter them. I’ve always enjoyed their company, and I consider it a privilege to take them to and from in my cab.
The Smith Ladies rode in my cab today, and it was the very best ride ever with them… because today, Mama Smith came home from a long stay in a nursing home.
I don’t know what Mama Smith’s particular trouble was, but I do know that she was unrestrained in her joy at the prospect of returning home. A woman of 92 all agrin like a girl of 14 is truly a thing of beauty.
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We began getting solo orders from Daughter Smith several weeks ago… picking her up at the nursing home in the mornings, returning her there to stay overnight with Mom later in the day. Each day. Every day. Her weariness from worry, from half-sleeping in a chair, from trying to remain alert to any possible need that her mother might have in the small hours of the night, was evident. As was her indefatigable good cheer. She’d sit in the back seat of my cab and muse about her mom’s interactions with the nursing home staff and with the other residents, and review aloud the chores which awaited her at the house. Daughter Smith was very matter-of-fact about it all, simply dealing with things as another chapter in life, and harboring no doubt as to an eventual happy conclusion.
I listened, and I drove, and I expected to eventually hear bad news… unhappy endings to such things are the norm, so my experience has taught me. Every life is finite, every life ends. When you deal with seniors as a matter of course, and especially when an affection for some of them grows in your heart, you’re constantly reminded of this simple fact. I think that I’m both a romantic and a realist, so I try to savor the little joys in life while refusing to be surprised by its tragedies. Today was a day to savor.
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I drove Daughter Smith home yesterday, and she told me that, barring last minute complications or some completely unforeseen problem, Mama would be coming home today. I told her that I’d keep my fingers crossed, and that I hoped I’d be lucky enough to be their driver. The cab company was fairly busy today, and I was running full-tilt all morning, tending to my own customers as well as dispatch’s orders… somewhere in there:
Dispatch- “I need a sedan in River” Me- “‘78, I can get it if it’s fairly short…”
Dispatch- “‘78, the Normandy for Smith…” Me- “…Smith”
I was lucky enough.
And I was able to share a 92-going-on-14 year old’s happiness in returning home on a beautiful autumn morning. She enjoyed the colors in the trees and the crisp chill in the air as if for the first time in life, she loved that she had a “regular” driver as her escort, and she thought it grand that I had an extra blueberry muffin for her to nibble with her back-home-again coffee. Her bantering with her daughter was innocent, girlish and musical.
Mama Smith climbed the several steps to her porch slowly, and with a bit of a struggle. Daughter Smith held her all of the way. Both wore smiles.
And so did I, because every now and then a daffodil will bloom in November.
