Driving down the highway has adopted a different meaning to me since the birth of my youngest son.

I spent way more time in the car then I had in the past, and not the productive thought-provoking kind of time, but the brain-numbing post birth kind of time.

The driving had to be smooth, unbroken, preferably at highway speeds and at least 30 minutes in length. It took some time for me to discover the exits and on-ramps without stop signs to slow my rhythmic jaunt, but after I found the perfect north and south turnarounds, I could fly down the highway, gleeful to have found an uninterrupted motion that would sooth my colicky baby to sleep.

We would have to go north as far as Terra Linda and then loop back south as far as Rodeo. This distance would ensure that the ride would be at least 30 minutes of near-constant motion; the necessary time to lull the baby and allow him to be asleep long enough to enter REM so that I could successfully transfer him to the crib when we pulled back into the garage providing the clicks and clunks of the garage door closing wouldn’t disturb that well-earned sleep.

It was when I was trapped in the car during these daily jaunts that my mind was clear -- okay, blank -- and I was unable to be consumed by the litany of tasks of motherhood so my observation was keen. I realized that this time lulling my baby to sleep pacified me enough to tune out the overwhelming vastness of parenthood and notice other details of highway driving.

It was only three days into these naptime journeys that I observed the single small, beat up tennis shoe (possibly toddler size 10) stranded in a ditch by the side of the road. I couldn’t get beyond mentally trying to figure out the story behind this one left shoe.

Was a mom finally fed up with her child insisting on pink everything and tossed the shoes out the window at 60 m.p.h, the mate forever lost in the bushes on the other side of the highway fence? Did the family have to make an emergency bathroom break by the side of the highway and in the haste of continuing the trek to Disneyland, junior lost one shoe? Did the child himself launch the shoe from the car in celebration after working for weeks to remove it while strapped in his car seat only to cry endlessly about it on the way to grandma’s house?

I couldn’t find a scenario that made sense to me. Even if the shoes were left on the roof of the car in a frenzy to get everyone dressed and out of the house, why only one? Where was the other shoe? The next day I searched with tired eyes every inch of that same route, to still find only one shoe between two exits with nothing but highway in between.

It defied physics.

And now that I am aware of the phenomenon, it isn’t only on my short stretch of highway, but I notice these un-mated shoes on highways everywhere.

There is something tragic about the one left shoe by the side of the road. It reeks of abandonment. Someone needs that shoe; a child needs that shoe. Someone needs to care about that shoe, about that child.

Someone who knows where to find the right one.

By Jennifer O’Shaughnessy

Labels: Jennifer O'Shaughnessy

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