Someone Needs to Drive the Car

My Mom broke her shoulder about six weeks ago. She was standing on her front porch talking to my brother Steve when she lost her balance. Luckily he was there to scoop her up and take her to the emergency room.
Since then it has been a blur. We've all pitched in to help Mom, who is really unable to do much for herself. You don't think about how many things you do each day that require two arms until you don't have one to use. When you add the medication to the mix, Mom was pretty much incapacitated for the first month.
I was talking to my brother Dave when I blurted out, "We need to start driving Mom's car." It wasn't the conversation topic, but it suddenly popped into my head and out of my mouth. I reminded Dave about last winter when we were in the midst of the polar vortex. We didn't want Mom driving on the snowy, icy streets so we drove her everywhere. This meant her car sat in the garage for months.
At one point she wanted to go somewhere and her car wouldn't start. Steve came out and changed her battery. It turns out that batteries die if you don't use them. Who knew? Certainly not me.
I remembered this while talking to Dave because we were going through a list of things we needed to remember to handle. Neither of us could remember the last time Mom's car left the garage. We talked to Steve and now someone drives the car every week or so.
Mom has a lovely, light blue Acura. It's about eight years old with not even 12,000 miles on the odometer. The inside is pristine. From the moment I got into it, I was nervous about somehow scuffing the interior or scratching the exterior.
I drove the car to take the girls to see the Wizard of Oz. We took it on the expressway for a solid 45 minutes each way. I swear that when I hit the accelerator I heard the car let out a sigh of relief. It was as if the car was saying, "Ah, that's what it feels like to hit the road again."