My Mother’s Compasses
I want to share two memories of my mother, Shirley, who passed away ten years ago on May 24, 2015.
January 2008
My mother has two compasses in her car. One is securely affixed to the dashboard, and because the needle is a magnet and something under the dashboard contains steel, it always indicates that she’s traveling north. The second one clings to the windshield with a suction cup, and as such is usually reliable, except when it falls off. At such times, she has to recalibrate it, which involves driving around in a circle.
On a cloudy day in January, she picked me up from my house in South Minneapolis, to go to Fort Snelling National Cemetery to fetch the Christmas wreath from my father’s grave. We have both been there many times; you would think we would know the way.
She drives around the airport and the Mall of America, and then we find ourselves heading north on a side street that will allow us to go east on the freeway, then south again, and then north, circling the cemetery like an airplane in a holding pattern. And this prompts Mom to recall a time when, as a Girl Scout leader, she led her troop on a hike and got lost.
“The red mark on my compass needle had worn off,” she explains. “And your dad said, ‘You don’t need that, any idiot knows north from south.’” She mimics the way he would say it, and laughs.
At last we find the entrance to the cemetery; the section; the marker. We retrieve the fading wreath, visit the nearby graves as though calling on neighbors, and linger a moment to look around. She tells me why she likes this cemetery, how she thinks that Dad would like the close proximity to the airport, the airplanes passing overhead.
Our task complete, we get back in the car to go home. First we cross the Minnesota River going east, then cross it back again going west. “I suppose I should get a GPS,” she muses as we eventually find the route back to my house.
June 2011
This time I am driving. I pick up Mom from her apartment in Shoreview, Minnesota, to go see her sister Delores in Milwaukee. We know that Aunt Delores is nearing the end of her life. We plan to stay the night and return home the next day.
As we head east on Interstate 94, we also know that we will encounter road construction; Mom now has a GPS, so she brought it along to help us navigate. When we exit the freeway and begin to travel the byways, we pass through many pretty little resort towns; this is a pleasant detour, and it is reassuring that we have with us a device that knows where we are going, even when we don’t.
But I still get confused, and sometimes go straight where it meant for me to turn left, and when this happens, the calm feminine voice of the GPS says, “Recalibrating …” as it comes up with a way to get us back on course.
After a visit filled with reminiscence and laughter, it is time to go home. The GPS skillfully guides us back to the freeway, with only one or two recalibrations, which put Mom in a thoughtful mood. She says, “I wonder if that’s what God does, when we stray from His intended path. I wonder if He doesn’t recalibrate, to find another way, to continue to guide us, even when we are confused or lost or unsure of the destination.”
When we are close to her apartment once again, we know the way and choose a slightly different route from the one preferred by the GPS. It no longer represents divine wisdom as it repeatedly tells us to turn around and go a different way; we laugh as we recall that my sister, Penny, has named her GPS Ethel, and seems to enjoy confounding it. It is just a machine, after all.
But I am left with the image of a divine navigator, patiently guiding us whether we are lost or willfull, not taking our wrong turns personally. Of course Mom would think of such a metaphor.