DRIVING?

When Fiorella was a child, doctors made house calls, and now she has to find transportation to their offices for anything from a sniffle to a heart attack.

Of course, back then, not many people could afford a car, and if they did, it was to drive them to work and back. At the most, there was only one vehicle  per family--it took a while after the war before the two-car family evolved. Fio remembers how her mother disapproved of her lady friends learning to drive and refused ro learn herself, claiming she had a vision problem (the same one your girl developed later on, which never stopped  her from passing a driving test.) Of course, this meant that Fio had to walk several  blocks to and from school every day--except for high school, when she grudgingly rode the city bus.

Thus, when she was old enough, you can bet Fiorella signed up for driver training. To be honest, she wasn't as good a student as the kids who'd been illegally driving their families' cars for practice for the last couple of years--she even got stopped once for not having her lights on at night--but she made it through, got her license, and was able to not only drive her kids to school, but drive her mother around from time to time.

Of course, later, years Fiorella and husband were a two-car family and drove their kids to school and themselves to work for years.

Then came the series of traumas--starting with Husband's death--that knocked your girl off kilter--and when she moved back to Austin, she stopped driving completely. 

But time has passed and Fio is ready to start driving again--first, up and down the street, and then maybe to HEB and the pharmacy. And if that's as far as it goes, she'll be happy, but, on the other hand, who knows what lies ahead? 😊