The best conversations of my marriage happened in a pickup truck. Not at the kitchen table, where there is always a dish to wash, and not in bed, where somebody is always tired. In the truck, with the radio low and the road going on ahead of us, my wife and I said things we had been carrying for months. There is something about a long drive that opens a person up.
I thought about that recently when a young couple I know out in West Texas told me about having their first baby. The nearest place to see the baby doctor was most of a morning away. They made that drive again and again, through the whole pregnancy, and then once more at the end, in the dark, with her holding the dashboard and him holding the wheel.
They told the story at church, and you could see the city people in the congregation wince. I understand the wince. But I want to make the case that those young people were given something city couples never get. They were given the road.
On those drives they talked about names. They talked about her mother and his father and what kind of parents they meant to be. They prayed together, out loud, which he told me they had never done before. They learned to read each other’s silences. By the time that baby came, they were more married than most couples are after a good long while, and I think the miles had a lot to do with it.
A doctor across the street is a convenience. A doctor across the county is a pilgrimage. Our grandmothers understood this. I expect many of them had their children far from any doctor at all, with a neighbor woman and a kettle and a great deal of prayer. Nobody wrote articles about how hard it was. They simply did it, and the ones who came through told their daughters how.
Rural hospitals in Texas have closed in recent years, and I know that has made the roads longer for a good many families. People want to talk about that as a loss. I would ask them to see it as an inheritance. We are giving young Texans the same long road their great-grandparents traveled, and the same chance to find out what they are made of.
I am not saying the drive is easy. That young man told me he had never been so frightened in his life as on that last night, watching the mile markers go by too slowly. But fear shared is a bond, and he and his wife have that bond now, and their child will grow up hearing the story.
This fall I will vote for the Republican for Senate, because I want young families out there to keep their road. I understand the other side would like to put a doctor closer to them, and I would not want to shorten the drive that made that young couple what they are.
Every family out there has a story about the long drive. Most of them end well. Those are the ones I like to tell.
D. M.