oblivion

On Christmas Day I hosted 10 people for dinner. My aunt and uncle were among the crowd. They are both in their 80's and live on Saltspring Island. They are both independent and function very well. They drive a Pathfinder. Somehow the topic of driving came up and my aunt said, "oh, I'm not a good driver at all" which is a completely true statement. It's a wonder she has never had any major accidents. She got ticketed in California for failing to merge at an adequate speed and had to be coached via loud speaker by the Highway Patrol man how to merge properly. I'm not sure what he thought she was going to do once she reached intended speed, but that was about 20 years ago and she's around to tell the tale. The key to her driving success is her complete oblivion to the other drivers around her.

Her oblivion has also served her well in other ways. She told us a story of when her and my Uncle were in Fiji. She took a multi day trip on a small boat to some remote islands. They anchored off shore and took some smaller boats in to explore for a while. Once the exploration was done she decided to swim back to the main boat. My aunt is an excellent swimmer and has incredible endurance in the water. she said the boat didn't seem too far away so off she went. She said she was a little more than halfway back when she could hear some people yelling in "what seemed to be a frantic tone. I stopped and treaded water for a few seconds and realized they were yelling, 'sharks, sharks!'" "I looked back at the shore and thought, 'that's a long way to go.' so I just kept going." the whole time she's telling this portion of the story she's making small breast stroke motions just above her plate with her fork dangling in her right hand. There is absolutely no trace of panic or distress in the tone of her voice at all. "The captain was very angry at me when I finally made it back to the boat. He just kept saying, 'why did you do that? did you see any of us swimming? why did you do that?'" Auntie Margaret kind of giggled at this point and said, "I knew I could make it to the boat. It really wasn't that far." 8 of us are staring at her in disbelief while my uncle just keeps eating his turkey. Oblivion is a beautiful thing.