When the oversized card came in the mail suggesting that I renew my driver’s license online, I was intrigued.  I wondered if this is an option that will be available to us when The Sheltering Time in over.  As in, don’t they need to see for themselves that I am not doddering and that my eyesight is what I say it is and that for an octogenarian I’m doing okay?

But, even with those semi-reservations floating through my old gray head, I followed the suggestions at the online site and… voilà!  I am good to go until 2027!  Never mind that they are using my 2015 photograph.  To say nothing of my pre-Covid weight!  (Surely I’ll lose these pesky pounds just as soon as that vaccine comes my way.  Isn’t that part of the deal?)  But it is interesting to think that I’ll be 91 before I need to renew again!  Yikes!

Uncle Will at OSU, 1904

Nowadays, my thoughts of driving and of drivers licenses are inexorably linked to memories of my Great Uncle Will.  He was my grandfather’s younger brother and, in 1963 at a family gathering in honor of his 80th birthday, we all watched in admiration as he cut his driver’s license into many pieces.  It was his firm belief that by the venerable age of 80 one should no longer depend upon good reflexes, eyesight, hearing or other necessities of driving safely.  Period.

Uncle Will and Aunt Minette lived in a lovely residential area of Oakland, California. Their children and grandchildren lived some hours away and we all wondered how they would manage with the only driver in the household now unlicensed.  But, as they pointed out, there was a neighborhood grocery store just a few blocks away, as well as a bus stop.  “We’ll do just fine,” they assured us.  And they did.  After Aunt Minette’s death in 1969, Uncle Will continued living in that house, alone, until his own passing in 1977 at 94.  About the only thing he didn’t do for himself was drive.

Sydney and Uncle Cecil, 1979

It’s not quite so simple when the closest grocery store is five miles away.  Or that’s what I told myself as I was renewing my right to drive online this morning.  But, Uncle Will is still one of my role models for Aging With Strong Convictions.  I wonder what he would have done had he retired to Oysterville like his younger brother Uncle Cecil.  (Uncle Cecil didn’t give up driving until he was 90, as I recall… )