My Mother's GPS

My Mother’s GPS


My son returned from his European vacation tonight, and I found myself tracking his flight from London periodically during its 11 hour duration on my computer.

I knew when he was moving at a ground speed of 496 mph at 40,000 feet over Greenland then some hours later at 475 mph at the same altitude over Alberta Province in Canada. The map would update and let me know if there was a deviation from the original flight plan.

I followed all of the final six minutes to landing marvelling at how many miles his plane covered in that short space of time even as it slowed, and noting as the plane’s altitude dropped quickly.

All of this made possible by the combination of GPS and Flight Explorer.com.


Then my mother came to mind. I suddenly realized that I had acquired one of her habits. She almost always mentally accompanied each of her many children on all our excursions from our home, whether it was to the corner shop or on the rare occasions when one of us went overseas. Her tracking usually included a prayer for our safety.

Sixty or more years ago, without so much as a watch, map or a compass, let alone cellphone or GPS, she had an uncanny ability to know if we deviated from our planned route. She could always figure out our Estimated Time of Arrival back home. She didn’t use that knowledge to exercise control over our movements though but rather as a basis for asking just the right question that would cause a revelation of some distraction along our way: a detention after school for some small infraction in class, a ripe mango from a neighbor’s tree which happened to fall some yards off our beaten path just as we passed, an impromptu game of football or cricket with schoolmates, perhaps a new adolescent romantic interest.

At my home we usually didn’t have a formal curfew, but when the church bell rang the Angelus at 6:00 pm everyday, all of us who were still of school age knew we should be at home. Similarly our day began when the church bell rang the “First Bell”, the first of three alerts, half an hour before the first Mass of the day.


When I left for Ireland to study, none of my family had ever experienced winter, although of course we had read about it and seen pictures of snow. Shortly before my trip I found Mother standing at the open refrigerator, her hands inside the freezing compartment for a few moments. Just trying to see how winter must feel, she explained. She doubtlessly would be tracking me, with her prayers, almost every day, far away from the world she knew, as I went about my new life in Dublin.