Mom likes to remind us that, “Can’t never did anything.” A farm girl from northwest Iowa, her spirit of adventure and work ethic combined typically translate into, “Sure, we can.”

That can do spirit has translated into a lifetime of joint projects, many involving moving large furniture X to place Y — I inherited my penchant for rearranging the furniture from her, or moving younger daughter, me, from A to B to C to D.

Mom helped me with three moves within the space of a few years: to my second and third jobs after college. First we pulled a small U-Haul trailer from Binghamton, NY to Ada, OH, an hour south of Toledo, home to Wilson football and Ohio Northern University. Two years later, I left the ONU Admissions Office, for a job at Colgate.

Of Mom’s many roles during these moves: optimist, encourager, talking the phone company and successive landlords out of charging me a security deposit, truster of strangers and interior decorator, it was her role as truck driver which tickles us the most as we recall those moves.

In 1986, Mom flew on People’s Express to Detroit, two hours north of Ada, where I picked her up in my ‘72 Plymouth Valiant, nicknamed, “Wilbur”, for the squealing brakes. Wilbur had a slant-six engine, which could go forever, and a steel body, exposed to years of road salt, which lasted until about halfway home from the airport. That’s how bad the rust was. The bottom of the trunk split open and dropped into the tire.

Mom is fearless with strangers. When a man pulled over and offered to help, she welcomed him as if they were neighbors. Already nervous from reading too many mysteries where things do not go well for women stranded along the side of the road — admittedly, it was broad daylight, my alarm grew when he returned to his truck and retrieved a crow bar. (He needed it to pry the trunk out of the wheel well to change the tire.)

Although my actual neighbor knitted Wilbur’s trunk together with a wire hanger, Mom had lost faith in this particular piece of American know-how and production. Rather than spend eight hours with Wilbur, she opted to drive the truck, which had a wonky signal, such that she had to manually flick the signal bar up and down, up and down, for each lane change and turn across 530 miles.

My first apartment, once back in NY, was in Oriskany Falls (pop. 732) which ended up being too far from the college, but had the jaw-dropping attraction of driving through a peacock farm each day. Two colleagues and I then rented a poorly-insulated house on the lake outside of Hamilton (pop 3,742), where it snowed indoors, until I learned about plastic sheeting and hair dryers.

The most challenging aspect the short 10 mile move from Oriskany Falls to Hamilton should have been Mom and I lifting the sleeper sofa onto the truck. Instead, I arrived at the U-Haul rental, expecting the small, automatic transmission truck I’d reserved, only to be told my sole option was a manual transmission vehicle, two sizes larger. Mom!

I don’t know how long it had been since she’d last driven a clutch, but she cheerfully hopped in behind the wheel, which was wider than she is, and off we went over the rolling hills. The gearshift was on the floor and stiff. To have enough leverage, she’d bounce right to shift, bounce left to drive, bounce right to shift, again, bounce left to drive…

I called Mom tonight to ask her to help me move to the North Pole. The journey, I continued, will involve eight tiny reindeer and a sleigh-truck. She said, “Of course. I’ll drive.”