Three years ago, the Spanish television Canal Sur de Televisión told a story of an extraordinary Spanish woman, Maite Alcaraz, in a short documentary series entitled “Madres.”
“She lives on the road, travels thousands of miles behind the wheel of a 40-ton truck, and reconciles work with the role of a mother. Her tiny daughter is her pilot” – this is how the report about the unusual Mayte begins. In the background, you can hear a song that a woman sings to a tiny girl sitting in a car seat in the Renault 440 cab.
Mayte is an experienced woman. She has been working in transport for 10 years. After a divorce, she remarried a truck driver and has two children, a 16-year-old son, and a 4-year-old daughter, Lidia. The Spanish woman did not want to give up breastfeeding or the greatest possible closeness in the first years of her children’s lives, so she decided to take them along with her.
How did her story begin?
The young Spanish woman studied psychology and worked in administration, but could not find herself at the university or at the desk. She was already a divorcee and a young mother when she decided to take over the business of her father, a truck driver. Although he tried to dissuade her from this idea by stressing the poor situation in Spanish transport and a difficult driving test, Mayte was not discouraged.
Two years after her father’s retirement, she gained the rights and got behind the wheel of a 40-tonne “monster.”
The Spanish woman admits that driving a truck from the beginning did not cause her any difficulties. The hardest part, however, was parting with my son. She soon decided that until the boy went to school, she would take him along with her.
Warning! Love on the way!
Mayte emphasizes that the driver’s work not only allowed her to be with the children in the most important years of their development but thanks to it she also got to know the love of her life – her second husband.
They met on the road. They stumbled upon each other in Despeñaperros in the north of Spain, they exchanged a few words and that’s how it began.
They soon married and their daughter Lydia was born, which Mayte would carry with her for as long as her older brother. This, of course, requires a lot of work because the cabin becomes the second home of both brave Spaniards. Sometimes there are “emergency stops” for changing diapers or feeding, but what a mother wouldn’t do for her child?
Mayte thinks she’s lucky. She does the work she loves without having to give up the closeness so important to her and her children.
Motherhood is the best thing that has happened to me in my life”- she emphasizes.
Do you take your kids on the road?
Photo: YouTube/Canalsur
