MY RACE CAR SIDE

When I attended Gulf Park College in Gulf Port Mississippi years ago, I used to date a race car driver. I fell in love with racing and speed. If you're out there, Charles Victor Smith, I'm still mad at you. Just kidding. I'm certain he's not around. When you publish a book, or get your name in the media, people come crawling out of the woodwork. When Katrina hit, I got another wave of mail from people I went to school with. My middle name is Camille, and I used it on the Internet. After Katrina, I decided it was in poor taste, as Hurricane Camille destroyed many lives.

I loved both the racing movies that came out this year, even though they were spoofs.The Will Ferrell movie, "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," was hilarious, and there was some real race car footage. I know its called Talledega Nights or something like that, but whoever named it should have realized that no one could pronounce it, let alone spell it. I liked the French Formula One driver. Formula One was the only cool racing events in my day. People who drove stock cars were considered hicks, kind of the way they are depicted in the Will Ferrell movie. Of course, today, they're all multi-millionares. The other movie both my husband and I loved was "Cars." It was orignal and refreshing.

I did a really stupid thing, which I'm prone to do quite often. I got my new husband, Dan, a gift certificate to drive a race car for Christmas. Well, you got it, he went nuts. Then I decided I hated fast cars and racing because I was afraid he'd get hurt or we'd get sued. Basically, we argued about his car a lot. It was a new Vette and he was constantly complaining about it. Turns out, he wasn't just being picky as always. The car was a lemon and we got our money back. Now he has a Porsche. He got a ticket the other day for going 92 or something in a Honda Civic. I'd always told him he was going to get a ticket in the Vette, but he never did. He's depressed because he can't drive fast anymore outside of the track.

I'm already over the speed thing. I got two or three tickets for going over 90 mph and that was the end of sports cars for me. I had a genuine reason for speeding a few times. My Mom had called me from Bakersfield and asked me to come. When my mother needed me, or anyone needs me that I care for, I fly to their side. Mother's gone now and I miss her terribly. She was beautiful up until the moment she died. It's wonderful to see a person who has led a good life die. My sister was with her, but I saw her at the end and know she had a good death.

Everyone should lose their fear of death and try to spend more time with the dying. To some, this might sound silly, but God speaks through the dying, just as He speaks through children. And if you see a good person leave their shell of a body behind, you will catch a glimpse of the Divine. I think people don't believe because we have created a society which both glorifies death on one hand and want to pretend it doesn't exist on the other. No one wants to read a book, or see a movie where the main characters dies. Right? I know because I wrote two books where the characters died and it almost sank my career. People die and we need to learn how to handle it, and see that its part of the overall beauty of life. More importantly, we need to learn to understand death.

As a child, I lived inside books. I've always been introverted. I would spend all my free time reading, and read far into the night. Perhaps that's why I slept under my coat on the playground during recess. The stories I read were so vivid and real, I became an adult at a very young age. Back then, characters died and we cried. This is one of the ways I prepared myself when I faced my the first loss of a loved one.

I'm a HUGE Mother Theresa fan. If you study her life, the simplicity of it is breaktaking. Her belief in God was so is unshakable, and the way she lived her life, to be she approached the embodiment of a female Christ. She said that when she or her sisters ministered to the dying people on the streets of Calcutta, they thought of them "as Jesus in distressing disuise." I try to remember these words when I see a person passed out on the street, their few meager possessions in shopping bags, their clothes stained with excrement. Yes, I want to shake my head and turn away. I refuse to take the position so many people do -- which is to say they brought their situation on themselves. They were drunks, drug addicts, criminals, etc. That isn't always true, and inside, most people know it. Some may have been in mental institutions and would rather live on the street than to go back. Hey, maybe they're crazy and maybe they're not. Have you ever been locked up in a mental hospital? In prison, you have rights. In the funny farm, you have nothing. If you don't have loved ones to protect you, you can meet a fate worse than you could ever imagine.

I'm sorry. I tricked you with the race cars and now I'm preaching. There's another Saint named Theresa (and Mother Theresa is a saint, regardless if the church has made it officia, which of course they willl). This one is Theresa of Avila, a fifteen century Spanish nun. She was a strong-willed woman, and when reading her works, you have to remind yourself that she lived so long ago. She sounds like a modern woman. One line I think is fantastic. "May we all be mad for Him, who for love of us was deemed mad. Prepare yourself so that you might receive this blessing." Of course, she was speaking about Jesus.

For those who are not Christian, I have great respect for all people of faith. I love Judiasm and consider myself a Judeo/Christian. I believe any seeker will eventually find God if they stay the path. Following Christ, or what the saints referred to as "cross to resurrection" is a difficult but straight path.

People wonder how I can speak so openly in a public forum. Those people don't know me. With me, what you see is what you get. When I was seventeen, I got pregnant. The guy promised to marry me, then told me he was married to someone else. He disappeared for six months, then sent me a letter and told me to get rid of the baby. This was, trust me, the single worst day of my entire life. I've suffered terrible injuries, undergone serious and pain surgeries, given birth to children, had boils on my back from malnutrition. But to be seventeen back in my day and have to make the decision to keep, give away, or abort a baby, when the father has dumped you toward the end of the pregnancy is shattering. The wonderful part about this story is my son. All my children are great, but this child will always be special. We have a bond that can never be broken. A few years back, I taught him how to write and he completed his first novel. We had so much fun writing together. I think back of all these incredible moments, where I was there for him and he was there for me, and how hard it is to remember even one instance when we didn't agree. All these happy occasions would never have occurred had I aborted my baby. This super man would never have walked this earth, where he has touched so many lives, had I not been willing to give up my dream of becoming a doctor and eagerly accepted my role as a mother. I've made so many terrible mistakes in my life. Its good to know that this wasn't one of them.

Nancy