I am a 15 year old Toronto guy who plays baseball. I have two practices each week in Ajax. My mother drives me.
An interesting thing happens on our drive back to the city. When we exit from the Don Valley the ramp cuts straight across the valley and then curls up out of the valley turning first to the left and then to the right before joining city traffic near Castle Frank. When we exit Mum hangs back along the straight road across the valley. A gap grows between our car and any others in front. Then at the bottom of the curvy ramp up out of the valley she floors the gas pedal on the Prius. The car roars and accelerates (somewhat) around the first turn and up the hill. You can feel the car's speed build as we climb the hill. Then she leans forward, grips the wheel and races into the final, right turn at the top of the hill. It's over in a second, well maybe 10 seconds max.
She calls it her Maserati moment and in that moment she is not a harried middle aged gray-haired mother of three teenagers. No. If the conditions are just right - if the traffic is light, if the road is dry so the tires can grip - she says she can imagine herself on a winding mountain road in the Italian alps behind the wheel of a Maserati convertible with her youthful long blond hair streaming behind her in the wind. I don't know why she fixed on Maserati. I doubt that she has never been behind the wheel of one. She knows nothing about fast cars. I guess such is the power of imagination, even for the middle aged.
I don't speak during this race across the valley and up the hill. Mum says that having a 15 year old son in the passenger seat just doesn't fit the moment for her. So I silently cheer her on and lean into the turns.
Dad does not know about this madness which is quite out of character for my mother. It is her time to forget family schedules and budget, meals to cook, our carbon footprint, all of the issues that come with three teen kids, the middle age blahs or whatever else 50 something mothers brood over. For those few fleeting seconds she is young again, footloose and fancy free in the fast lane of life as she imagines it might have been like - if ever she was really in it.
Before long I will head off to college and the frequent baseball treks to Ajax will be no more. But for now I will sit back, buckle up and enjoy the ride.
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