I began 2015 with neither a New Year’s resolution nor a way back to school.
One of these issues was solved fairly easily. While my family was trying to arrange transportation back to Grounds for second semester, my 85-year-old grandmother, who was visiting from South Carolina during the holiday break, chimed in that Charlottesville was only a few miles out of the way of her normal route back to Hilton Head, and happily offered to drop me off on her way back to warmer weather.
And so, in a car filled with our combined six suitcases, two garment bags and Yoda — the Chihuahua my grandma adopted a few years ago — we began the near-seven hour drive through the Blue Ridge mountains at 5 a.m.
I always take my role as co-pilot very seriously on long drives — but with Marjorie Rieling in the driver’s seat, my responsibilities looked a little different. These included, but were not limited to: keeping an eye out for gas-stations when I noticed the tank was running low, making sure the CDs containing big-bang classics were switched in a timely fashion and noting any behavior that might suggest Yoda needed a pit-stop more than we did.
As a reward for my vigilance (the one time I dozed off can be forgiven — it was pre-sunrise, after all), my grandma filled the hours we spent together in the car with her life story.
I’ve always known my grandma was the kind of lady who could best be described using words like “strong” and “hardworking,” though I usually prefered the slightly more colloquial, “kickass.” However, the stories I had been told about her were always recounted in third-person, as my mother or uncle relayed to me anecdotes from their childhoods or bits of her history they had gleaned through the years.
It is not a part of my grandmother’s character to self-aggrandize. But when prompted directly — as I did frequently during those seven hours — she felt obligated to indulge in her incredible history.
She told me stories of the near-dozen different schools she attended as her mother relocated their family across Missouri, and of the miles she walked to school when she stopped updating the registrar with each of her new addresses so she wouldn’t have to transfer. She detailed the tortuous diet she abided by to keep her job as a size-two fit model in New York City. She described the two jobs she held while undergoing chemotherapy so she and my grandfather could keep my mother and uncle in school.
As we hurtled toward Charlottesville — once even nearing 90 miles per hour, at which point my grandmother pumped the brakes and apologized profusely — and I listened to my grandmother describe the ways in which she had handled the challenges that life put in her path, I grew increasingly aware of how unprepared I felt for my return to Grounds. The challenges I would meet in the new semester and in the new year didn’t even begin to approach the scope of what my grandma has faced in her lifetime.
Despite the difference in our circumstances, it quickly became clear this trip could alleviate my trepidations surrounding the new year. The longer I listened, the more I felt myself becoming increasingly inspired to be more like my grandmother, who learned to fly a plane before she learned to drive a car, would always prefer to put herself to work laying sod or tending to plants in my family’s garden to relaxing, who will pump her own gas even when I offer to help and who will send me to the grocery store with a pocket full of cash that she received from her social security check, which she instructed me to spend “on fruits and vegetables” to ensure I’m eating healthily at school.
My grandmother is the kind of woman who will absolutely always put the needs of her family, friends and, in more recent years, even her dog, before her own. If I could face the new year with even a fraction of the bravery and compassion that she has demonstrated over her lifetime, I will be off to a pretty good start.
So this year, the woman sitting next to me in the passenger’s seat was both my ride and my resolution.
Kristin’s column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.murtha@cavalierdaily.com.
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