I have been driving a lot lately in an area I don’t know. This, in case you missed the memo, is because I just moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. Naturally I have been relying heavily on Google Maps to tell me how to get around. I even allow Siri to speak to me now. And I still get lost.
Getting lost is not the worst of my crimes. When I drive with my teen riding shotgun, my worst crime sounds something like this: Mom, take the next right. Next right. THIS RIGHT. Ohh, you missed it.
In truth, I have always had what could be charitably described as an execrable sense of direction. It has given rise to the saying in our family: All who wander are not lost. But some definitely are.
This is not the end of it, however. I also have a weird habit that I cannot even explain to myself of knowing instinctively when I need to take a turning and yet not taking it. This was true before Siri was even a thing, and it is completely incomprehensible to my teen. Last week we were driving from my new home in Clinton Hollow to my new local town of Rhinebeck. Siri directed me to take a slight right onto East Market Street. I saw the turn. It loomed towards me. My instincts all told me I should take it. Yet I drove straight on along South Street. Try to imagine things that were said in the car.
The reason I resisted having Siri speak to me for so long is because she is stupid and annoying. Yes, she helps you get places. Yes, I would be completely inept in my driving activities without her. But do I really need to be told to proceed to the route when I’m just driving straight down the road? Or that, after being warned that my destination is on my right, I have arrived? I know I have arrived: it’s my driveway!
Sometimes I just miss the days when you had to pull over and look at a crumpled map.
I started my new job this week. The office where I am doing orientation is a 20 minute drive away. There are three turns. After a couple of days, I decided to take the training wheels off. I could get to the office without Siri, right? I got lost. Not just going to work but coming home. How, you might wonder, did I find myself over on the other side of Poughkeepsie and going the wrong direction? See above re all who wander.
To compound things, when you take a wrong turning Siri immediately forgives you and sends you home a different way. So now I’ve come home from the office three different ways, but I don’t know any of them. I did see some lovely farmhouses though, so there was that. And on Thursday I found my way to work all by myself, with no directions that my destination was on the left, I had arrived, or to proceed into the parking lot. So ha, Siri!
The real issue here is that I have moved across the continent. New York is not as different from California as California was from Ireland, which I left in 1989. But it’s different enough. They don’t sell wine in grocery stores here, you have to go to a bottle shop. I mean, what kind of alien planet have I landed on?
When you move three thousand miles to another state, you expend a lot of time and energy just taking in all the new sights and sounds, just trying to figure out how people do things around here. It’s fascinating, absorbing a new culture, and it’s also exhausting. You have to get a new dentist, a new driver’s license, a new favorite local coffee shop. But there are definite bonuses. After 25 years of using a post office box, I have a street address now, a real mailbox with the little red flag you raise when you have mail for collection. It’s very exciting.
Meanwhile, underneath the new road names and bird calls and landmarks, the global pandemic rages on, the election looms close, and black lives continue not to matter to law enforcement. It’s new here, and it’s the same. People say things differently, but they say the same things. In a couple of weeks, I will start to get my own patients again. No doubt, I will see that even twelve states over, people still die the same way.
I’ve been riding my bike around the back roads, and have learned how to get from the 9G to the 9 and up to Rhinebeck on my own recognizance. Once I’m driving around Ulster County visiting patients, I know that despite her shortcomings, Siri will be my best friend. And even when I fail to take the next right, she won’t judge me. Like a strange mix between an endlessly patient mom and a really annoying older sister, she’ll just recalibrate and tell me to take the next available right and then proceed to the route.
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