Everyone who knows me knows that I am a wimp when it comes to driving. I don’t know what happened to the girl that loved to cruise the California freeways 38 years ago. Of course traffic was easy then but you still had the merge thing going and I thought it was so much fun to drive in traffic.

It is now 38 years later and I find my driving limited to country roads and small community blocks. It seems that when we travel out of my comfort zone someone else is always driving with a little help from the back seat driver.

We were supposed to help my son and his family move. This is the Iowa son. The plans were to leave at noon on Friday. Friday morning the driver in my household woke up with a severe earache and bad cold. It was not a problem because I could catch a ride with my daughter and her husband. Shortly after making this decision they called and they too were laid low by illness.

Usually I would have fretted and made some excuse as to why I could not drive the 2 1/2 hours on my own. The thoughts were racing through my head. It was not snowing, it was not raining, I wasn’t sick and I didn’t have to work. My dog wasn’t sick and I didn’t have to take him to the vet.

I had to make the trip to Iowa. I really wanted to go since I have so much fun with my grandchildren but did I mention I suffer from anxiety?

I packed the car, checked to make sure I had my cell phone and few cd’s and started down the road. I hit the freeway and merged beautifully (there were no cars, God is good).

I decided to try my cruise control. Wait, I never use cruise control. I couldn’t find it. My fingers softly felt the wheel of the car and I felt a button. I had my sunglasses on and they are for distance reading so I could not read the button. I did not want to push the wrong button. I might eject from the car.

So as I melted down I stopped at an Albert Lea exit so I could find my cruise. What a relief.

The next problem was my radio. I have favorite stations that are not set. Again my sunglasses got in the way of reading the stations on the radio. Since I don’t like fiddling and driving, I gave up on the radio and listened to a CD. The CD had big letters I could read with my sunglasses.

And then I saw it. I saw my first semi. No offense to all of you truckers, but I quake at the sight of a semi especially if we are passing it. It seems my vehicle is so small and the hulks of semis are so big. It seems there isn’t much space between us as we are passing.

I gritted my teeth, I braced myself and I prepared to pass. I had a light bulb moment. There was no one with me telling me to pass that semi. If I didn’t want to I did not have to pass that semi. I sighed in relief at my light-bulb moment and pulled back in the lane to follow the semi.

Unfortunately, I drank too much water and coffee and so I needed to stop. My hands broke out in a sweat. I remembered the story my son told me about one of his woman vendors that stopped at a rest stop and came out of the stall to find a gun pointed at her while she was robbed. You know we always remember the bad stories. The rest stop was upon me. I pulled in. I glanced around. I held my purse tight suspicious of everyone at that rest stop. I knew the older lady next to me was just waiting to rob me of my pink sunglasses.

I made it to Ankeny safely and breathed a sigh of relief. No one was home yet. The doors were locked. At that point I took a breath and realized how nice my trip had been. The music was beautiful, the weather was great and I actually passed a semi. I wasn’t going to let a little thing like being locked out of a house ruin my day.

I pulled out a book and settled down in a jungle gym slide as there were no chairs. I couldn’t remember the last time I had time to sit in the sun and read.

An hour passed and I was getting cramped so I climbed out of the jungle gym and reached to the sun and decided it was a good yard for yoga. I don’t know what the neighbors thought as I stretched and laid in the grass and sat in meditation but it was wonderfully refreshing.

The next two days were spent laughing and playing with the cutest kids in the world. We ate at McDonald’s and Burger King. I tried the Burger King Playland’s tube gym; let me tell you, it is hard on the knees. If you ever decide to try Burger King’s tubes, wear kneepads.

We played in the park and met some wonderful people and dogs. We unpacked trucks and played in the mud since the sod wasn’t in. I had no worries, I had fun.

We had no television, we had no Internet, and we read no newspapers for two days. I thought the world was wonderful because I had heard no news.

As I was traveling home I realized the weekend had changed me. I had faced a fear and my anxiety and I was still here. I turned up the tunes, belted out a few notes, passed a few semi’s and headed home.

My fear had been bigger than reality. On this trip reality became bigger than my fear. No matter how old you are you can spread your wings, face your fear and start a new journey in your life.

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send e-mail to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net or visit her blog at www.justalittlefluff.blogspot.com.