‘In Toronto, a call from Ireland surprised me. My mother had made a decision’

My mother’s phone call surprised me. More than two thousand miles of ocean and land separated the two of us and she had made a decision.

Months after the sudden loss of my father, she looked out her window at the car she never learned to drive. It was still parked outside, a mere 10-minute walk away from the Derry walls. “I got this idea in my head that I should book a driving lesson with John,” she told me on the phone. “You remember him, Maeve’s son.”

I moved to Canada in 1981, but as my mother’s only daughter, we still chatted on the phone every week.

She set me straight when I mentioned the learner licence. “I already took a taxi downtown and sorted that out.” After that I received updates on her progress during our weekly conversations. “John’s patient and I pay him.” There was pride behind those words from a woman who found her first job outside the home 30 years after marriage.

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No one in our family had John’s skill in diplomacy. My mother had little tolerance for correction of any kind but there was never a harsh word or complaint about him. John told her that her driving was excellent. Her nerves were a bit of a problem, he admitted, especially when she was stressed. I would have paid good money to listen in on that conversation in the car.

In the months of lessons that followed I wondered from afar about his endurance. I had my own experience of driving with my mother on trips back home. “Dear God,” she would pray when we travelled along small country roads around Derry while oncoming cars passed by my small rental. She clutched the dashboard with both hands, her seat belt extended way beyond normal.

John assured her when she failed the test a second time that she was a really good driver. Their lessons continued on and off. I was proud of her, if a bit concerned. She did not offer to take turns in the car when I flew home to see her and although she loved to gossip about other people’s foibles, John escaped any such commentary.

On one of my visits home from Canada, I drove my mother to see her brother William, who lived across the Border near Carndonagh. We stopped at a checkpoint with ramps and barbed wire manned by soldiers in battle dress, their accents from across the sea. That afternoon I gave details of our journey to a soldier almost as young as my oldest son. Sadness followed me beyond the barbed wire and sandbag huts.

Moments later my mother spoke up. At that same spot she stopped the car on her way to visit her brother. “Each time I stall, one of the soldiers helps me out of the car. He takes off his hat and drives over the ramp for me.”

I drove away from the checkpoint, the guns and her story without saying a word.

Back home at my kitchen table in Toronto I thought about the times she drove along roads and across army ramps with the L plate on the car and no driver beside her. Who knew? Who did she tell? Then I remembered what we learned as children. Outside the house, say nothing.

[ From the archive: Refusing to say nothingOpens in new window ]

“I have decided to give the car to Colin,” she told me on the phone two years after the first driving lesson. I may have misread her tone. Was this a great gift bestowed on the only child who lived near her while the rest of us scattered far away?

I last saw the old grey car parked by the side of my brother’s house outside Letterkenny surrounded by trees and fields in the midst of remote calls from cows and sheep. A cat lay stretched out on the bonnet while a new pup scouted around the tires.

I looked through the driver seat window and remembered my father’s pride in the new car long ago. Only one driver I told myself. Then I remembered the second, my Donegal mother fearless and feisty at the age of 70.

Mary Curran moved to Canada in 1981. She is a retired educator from Derry who lives in Toronto

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