Just call us our own kind of Thelma and Louise — or Smokey and the Bandit?

Last week, my Mama and I road trip over 1000 kilometres, through 3 provinces, 2 provincial parks, across to one island out in the ocean, over a bridge that takes more than 10 minutes to cross, driving down the longest bridge in the world across waters that freeze in winter.

“Long bridges can still be crossed.“

And something between us bridges in entirely unexpected ways.

It’s refreshingly true: Long bridges can still be crossed. Whole oceans between two lives can still be crossed.

Crossing a bridge over churning waters is more possible than it seems.

This is how it happened:

When ministry took me to the country’s edge, out to the ocean, I did what I’ve never done before, and I gave my mama a ticket to wing her way alone out to the waves too, to share a wander with her along the ocean one more time, just her and I.

“Time is short but our arms can be long and reach out to hold on to each other as long as we can.“

Time is short but our arms can be long and reach out to hold on to each other as long as we can.

We all know it: The future refuses to reveal its hand to any of us.

And Mama’s already been given 71 years, braved and weathered profound trauma, burying her baby girl, and all these people she loves and parts of her heart, and parts of her are strong, and parts of her are fragile, and I witness her courage and pain in so many of the steps forward now, and I see it: When mobility is a challenge, the challenge is to share experiences that keep moving the heart.

So it’s on a Saturday morning, after I’ve served on a Friday night, that we throw our bags into the back of a rental, buckle up, tell Siri to take us toward the shore and the edge of all the things, and my heart feels it after the jarring, painful loss of one parent:

Life with your parents can be like living with a safety harness to the mother ship in ways you only realize once they’re gone and it’s severed, and then you strangely feel like you’re floating through the cosmic dark of space, untethered to your first home, in ways you’ve never known.

As Mama and I pull out onto the highway, I smile, reach over, pat her hand. While you’re still given the gift of a parent, you want to reach out and hold on to that tethering, hold them, and not take the grace of any of these fleeting days for granted.

Mortality gives the gift of clarity, of knowing that time surely holds much uncertainty, so hold on to each other while there is still time.

“Mortality gives the gift of clarity, of knowing that time surely holds much uncertainty, so hold on to each other while there is still time.“

We turn down side roads. We get off the beaten path. We drive through old cover bridges with worn wood planks, down into sleepy little villages with faded church steeples. I pull over on narrow sideroad’s barely-there shoulder so Mama can flip open the folded case of her phone to frame up another picture that she can’t see that well on her smudged screen.

When she gestures wildly for me to turn around and go back to an old shingled, woodworking shop, I find a laneway to wheel us around because love is always about a matter of direction.

This is what we do:

Crank Old Playlists to Feel Young Again

As I drive and lay down the miles, I ask her to remember songs she loved and she tells me names of folk artists, and we play the rich depths of Karen Carpenter, and croon to Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and I tell Siri to play Don McLean’s “American Pie” and she sings at the top of her lungs, “Did you write the Book of Love? And do you have faith in God above?”

Feeling young again is always a close and invigorating possibility.

And as the suns blushes pink through the passing pines, we sway to John Denver’s “Country Roads” and she quietly asks me to play “Annie’s Song” and I can remember her playing that for my father and we both brim a bit when we sing it as the Atlantic shimmers to the east: “Like a sleepy blue ocean/ You fill up my senses/ Come fill me again …”

Turning down roads, we turn up tunes, and this playing old playlists with your parents lets you see them young again, let’s them feel their youth all over again.

I turn the volume up and how had I not known it? Feeling young again is always a close and invigorating possibility.

Ask Questions to Find Knownness

At a friendly gas station somewhere south of Pugwash, Nova Scotia, I download an app with 36 questions because:

The real destination is always communication — so souls feel known.

“The real destination is always communication —

so souls feel known.“

So as Siri directs, and we wind around bends in the road tracing along shorelines, I ask her:

Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

When I ask her the next question that the app suggests, “When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?” we both throw our heads back and howl laugh because how many miles have we now spent singing our whole hearts out?

I tell myself to memorize this, because this is where I always want to arrive:

Asking questions is how you arrive at the ultimate destination of helping someone feel known.

Curiosity is the key to intimacy.

Curiosity is the key to intimacy.

We roll windows down. We talk and ask questions and we listen. We clear the air.

The wind blows Mama’s hair, silver lining in twilight.

The Present is for embracing the Gifts that Are

Somewhere north of the Bay of Fundy, Mama reaches over and squeezes my hand and she lets her hand linger and I don’t know how many miles we drive like this. This is where our journey can lead: We can find more of each other.

The places where we’ve missed each other can still give way to U-turns.

The ways a parent falls short can completely fade in comparison to the ways they’ve loved long.

What a parent wasn’t able to give you, can be dwarfed in this present moment, by what they did give.

What a parent wasn’t able to give you, can be dwarfed in this present moment, by what they did give.

I look over at Mama, her eyes twinkle dancing with gifts and truths she’s still giving me, still living with me:

Change defies time. It’s never too late to change. What we choose to focus on ultimately defines our lives.

When we focus on the dark, it blinds us to how we can be part of the Light.

When we keep turning toward the Light, we are part of sending this world spinning toward glorious wholeness — in the direction of healing.

The future we long for is simply a string of short present moments that can tie us to the gift of change.

“A flood of forgiveness can raise the tides, raise all our boats and bring us home to hope.“

Make a peace treaty with all the unknown, and live into all the peace of letting yourself be known.

Life isn’t measured in time, but how you’re using time to come alive to life in ways you’ve never have before.

When I’m not sure how to turn the lights on in a rental car, Mama leans over and points. I nod and flick on the lights. I can see their glint reflected in her eyes.

A flood of forgiveness can raise the tides, raise all our boats and bring us home to hope.

They Helped With Our Dreams, Now We Can with Theirs

After a long day of driving and turning, always this turning, again and again, toward each other, we pull into a tiny AirBnB on a dark, dead end street on the edge of the world, and though we can’t see anything, we can hear the waves lapping, kissing the shore again and again.

I kiss Mama’s forehead and whisper goodnight. She still smells like home to me.

In the early dawning of the next morning, after she’s rushed outside to stand on the rocky shore in her pyjamas, her phone case flipped open, to take pictures of waves and sea gulls and all matter of seaweed washed in, I greet her at the door.

True, that: I grew up asking her for all the things I wanted.

But now it’s her turn to me all me all that she wants: Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? What would make your heart large with joy? Here I am, at your service.

“When we focus on the dark, it blinds us to how we can be part of the Light.“

In a world of options and dreams, she surprises me and she doesn’t, because hasn’t she always been about seeing the value in restoration?

“Thrift stores! Let’s find thrift stores!“

Deal! Siri! Value Village! Siri finds one, just one street back from the water. Mama finds the identical bear pattern to the bear pattern she sewed up for us in my childhood. She nods my way with giddy smile, winks, and tucks the pattern in her basket — she will use the very same pattern to sew another generation of teddy bears for grandchildren, and old patterns can surprise us with new hope! I watch her thumb through shelves of old children books and I can remember the tattered Eloise Wilkin books she used to read to me under a knitted afghan on her bed.

There is still time to read each other.

Read Aloud to Read Quiet Parts of Our Souls

Somewhere in the caverns of the thrift store, I find a book on growing older gracefully for $4.99. I read the introduction aloud to her after tea that evening. She asks me if I will read another chapter aloud to her the next morning.

We fall into this rhythm of cups of steaming tea, and watching waves, and reading aloud about meaning and time and regret and life being a series of new beginnings again. And I realize:

When we read aloud to each other, we make space to hear the quiet things within each other.

I promise Mama that long after she returns home, I will call her to keep reading loud to her, to keep reading more of the quiet places in her soul.

One morning in the tiny kitchen, in front of the stove, with the tea kettle gently whistling that it’s time, it’s time, my mama turns round toward the canvas of windows filled with the blue expanse of ocean and all these rocking waves wearing down the stones along coast, and she murmurs it to me slowly, unexpectedly, tears in her eyes,

“Would you hold me, Ann — just hold me for a moment?”

And I hold Mama.

“Time is made of all the seconds, and all kinds of second chances to be kind.“

I hold my beautiful little Mama and we rock, me the babe she first rocked in arms, and her now my white crowned mama, held in mine.

I’m no longer the scent of a newborn in arms. She’s now the cherished fragrance of age in mine.

I inhale the glory of this moment and all this wave of emotion.

Time is made of all the seconds, and all kinds of second chances to be kind.

And whatever time has held, as long we are still here, there is still time to find each other, to hold on to each other. Bitterness, regret, jadedness doesn’t have to have a hold on us; we can choose to be held by the vulnerability of intimacy. The only way to really forge forward is not to let your soul be forged in a furnace of bitterness, but to forge toward others with kindness.

There will be a day in the future where now will be but a photograph you can’t get back to, that only memory has the key to return to. But today? Right now?

The present moment
is a gift
of a love letter that you get to write
with your whole life right
now,
and send out into forever.

Holding Mama in my arms, my heart aching for all its holding, the heavenly cloud of her white hair brushes my cheek and I kiss her forehead again.

“It’s okay, Mama, it’s okay. You are loved, Mom… I so love you, Mama.”

“And I love you, dear daughter.”

And whatever detours and bends and turns in the road any of the the trip has held, there are bridges that still hold.

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