That I don't drive can be qualified as chickens coming home to roost. I'd never been interested in driving. Not that my husband didn't encourage me and try time and again to teach me over the years. Not even when I took a driver's ed course finally at age 65, and afterward when I'd had a number of driving sessions with the instructor and my husband kept going out with me in the driver's seat, expressing admiration for my driving abilities. I just surrendered to my unwillingness to drive, and never proceeded to obtain my permanent driver's license.

Now, fifteen years later, when it would be eminently convenient for me to drive while my husband is slowly recuperating from open-heart surgery, I am unable to fulfill a necessary function. Yesterday morning Mohindar, one of our wonderful neighbours, drove us to the nearby medical laboratory for another blood test required by the surgeon to evaluate how the blood thinner is impacting on my husband to avoid the potential of a blood clot after mitral valve replacement. But the clinic was so crowded with people the wait would be over an hour and he was in no condition to sit there, waiting, so we returned home.

I tried to make an appointment on line but the nearest possibility was Saturday morning early or failing that, two Fridays away. I booked the Saturday appointment. Later, outdoors cleaning up the gardens preliminarily to complete clean-up, I was cutting the grass on the front lawn when Serge came over and informed me that from now on he intended to cut our grass whenever he did his own, two lots over. I thanked him and invited him to push the rotary mower I was using; a breeze. I didn't need help cutting the grass, I said, and then related to him our experience of the morning.

Serge suffers from jaundice, among other ailments so he often goes along to the lab for blood tests and it was his experience, he said, that the best time to go would be just before they lock the doors, at four. He offered to return us to the lab, to pick us up at 3:30 so we'd arrive no later than 3:45, when, he said, there would be no one waiting and we'd be accommodated quickly. And that's just what we ended up doing.