Little Yellow Car

I was ill, had to leave the job I loved, started to recover and found help in the shape of an Open University Taster Course.  For those of you who may not know, the OU is available to all who work at home at their own pace but within  a framework. There is a wonderful tutor system to give every possible support.  Lifelong educative ambitions may be at last fulfilled, either to further a career path or for the pure pleasure of learning.  It seemed perfect for me, who didn't want much contact with my fellow man.  Taster Courses are designed to see if study is for you.  I did one, loved it but thought I would try another before taking the plunge and going for the degree.

The next one I tackled (yes, I am coming to the car!) was called Open to Change.  The soul-searching in analysing how one had dealt with a previous period of change and how one might deal with future change was challenging.   One instruction was to visualise where you would like to be one year hence and then plan the steps that would get you there.

Never having had any difficulty in dreaming I closed my eyes and saw myself in a beautiful field sitting beneath a tree generous with shade.  I was reading.  The grass dotted with meadow flowers sloped gently to a little rippling, gurgling stream on which sunlight and dragonflies danced.  Overhead birds added their song.  Bees, heavy with pollen, lumbered desultorily from blossom to blossom.  Between the field and the distant road there was a gate and outside the gate there stood the little yellow car which had brought me to this idyllic place.  It's sunroof glinted in the sun.

I opened my eyes and scribbled a list of steps, one of which was to sell some antiques I had inherited. Then I read it and decided that it was a lovely dream but there was no way I could go out and do it.  I would have to TALK to people.  I was in the middle of writing an email to my tutor to thank her for the help she had liberally given me and to tell her that regretfully I could go no further when suddenly light dawned.  I could do my research on the internet.

It was July.  I was sitting at my computer.  It was raining. It was grey.  My life was grey.  The world was grey.  "Sod it" I said to myself.  I stood up.  I went to a near-by dealership and ordered myself a brand new car, yellow, with a sunroof.  In one fell swoop I had skipped several steps and gone straight to my goal.  I felt terrified (where was the money to come from?) and brave.  I'd gone from I can't to I can.

That's why you will have read in my haiku of my car.  To me it represents freedom.  Without it, looking after Ma, visiting my children and now looking after Mimi, would be infinitely more difficult, given the distance from me.  It is a bright statement to the world - my little yellow car.