I needed to renew my driver’s license, an ordinary task for most people. Not for me.
I drove to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) on a Wednesday afternoon thinking the room would be less crowded. I was correct. When I arrived, there was one person in the waiting room and two clerks behind the counter.
I approached the counter and cheerfully said I wanted to renew my driver’s license. One clerk looked up and pointed me to the kiosk at the front door.
“Take a number,” she instructed. I resisted the temptation to salute.
Shamed for not following proper procedures, I tiptoed back to the kiosk and pushed the button for driver’s license.
“Do you have an appointment?” The ominous message appeared on the screen.
“No.” I replied.
The screen went blank, and I started over. This time I typed that I wanted an appointment. (I really did.) The machine responded with a list of times. I started talking to the machine and said I already was there and the current time was fine so let me proceed. The kiosk didn’t care about or answer my verbal message.
I typed in the current time, and the machine started to process my request.
“Appointment approved,” the machine wrote. I felt special and thought I was ready. But, no.
“Scan the QR Code,” came the message. The machine mocked me as if guarding powerful secrets for entrance into an ancient Egyptian tomb.
I grumbled as I fumbled through my purse, found my cell phone, and managed to open the camera to scan the magic but elusive entry code. Alas, my phone wouldn’t capture the code. I continued to talk to the Kiosk with frustration and a growing irritation. Another person who knew the rules entered the building and stood behind me. My anxiety activated my heart defibrillator.
Finally, a uniformed official appeared from another room and asked me to follow her. I wondered if a group of employees had been secretly recording me to make a training video to be used throughout the state. The video would warn DMV employees how to deal with vintage women who started driving tractors on the farm at age 14, had driven for sixty years without needing to prove their ability to drive, and resented being told to take a number.
So, to survive the situation, I flew away on my dragon.
I have a lifelong habit of dealing with stress by escaping into my imagination. For the rest of my time at the DMV, I was victoriously riding on a fire-breathing dragon. This liberating image allowed me to finish renewing my license, agree that my weight had remained the same for 40 years, and leave the building without hurting anyone.
Once back in my car, I told the dragon to go back into my imagination, and I would summon him when needed.
The dragon replied, “Take a number.”
1. She is a resilient maverick. After 22 hours of labor, she emerged between metal forceps as the doctor braced his foot against the bed and pulled. She weighed almost 10 pounds and was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit with an Apgar Score of 3. That’s when I knew all the pleasant birth and parenting videos were wrong. I finally got to see and hold her 12 hours later. For the next few months, I woke to touch her every few hours to make sure she was breathing.
2. She is precocious. We loved to read books together, and she memorized more than 20 nursery rhymes by the age of two. I know that’s true because I wrote about it in my journal. She’s still an avid reader.
3. She is adaptable. She had six bedrooms in two states by the time she was six. The photo in the rocking chair was taken when we lived at Sand Springs Ranch on the edge of a canyon overlooking the Snake River. We were forced to move, I was seven months pregnant, and she became my dependable helper.
4. She is organized. We created and hosted wellness retreats for women at mountain cabins in Central Idaho. She taught yoga, made healthy meals, and guided the groups on hiking excursions to hidden hot springs. She created crafts for the participants and led inspirational workshops. She also taught me how to set up a website and establish social media accounts. Now she plans workshops, retreats, a podcast, events, and goat yoga.
5. She is healthy. She owned the Stroller Strides franchise and helped young mothers exercise with their babies. She opened a private gym and tailored classes to all ages of women. We jogged in the 5K Women’s Fitness Challenge in Boise. I was one of the last people at the end of the race, but I finished.
6. She loves the arts. We saw Broadway musicals in London, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. She starred in a play in high school and later at a community theatre in Hawaii. She also won a writing award from the Idaho Writers Guild and helped translate one of my children’s books.
7. She loves to travel. We traveled to Europe twice and visited France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. We enjoyed excursions when she studied for a year in Guanajuato, Mexico. We traveled with my mother on an 11-day train trip across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver. (We decided three days would have been sufficient.)
8. She’s funny and has an amazing sense of humor. As a child, she could make me laugh at her stories, antics, and imitations.
9. She is ready for adventure. She visited Hawaii after college graduation and decided to stay. She taught at the Waldorf School on Maui and worked on a tourist boat. When I was 52, we hiked and backpacked for three days across the Haleakala Crater on Maui, Hawaii. I was ready to quit and go live in the forest, but she encouraged me to keep going. So, I did. She returned to Idaho with her future husband and a sweet baby girl.
