Learning to Drive
I didn't learn to drive until Maia was a baby. When I still lived at home and my friends started getting their learner's permits, my parents made it clear: Don't go jacking up our insurance rate with your wacky driving dreams. (I rode my bike everywhere, so they didn't have the added incentive of taxi driver-relief).
The traveling years presented no particular opportunity or necessity to learn to drive. There are trains and busses and boats everywhere but America. So, it wasn't until I enrolled in college in California and they told me that I couldn't live with a kid in the dorms that it happened: Shit. I need a car. My paternal grandparents, having denied a plea to help me pay for college, called in a surprise offer of $3,000 for a car. I spent $1,000 on the deposit for our new off-campus apartment, $1,000 on the first two months rent, and $1,000 on a rusty Dodge Colt that would burst into flames within a couple of years. But right then it wasn't on fire and it was mine. I figured out how to operate the thing well enough to pass the driving test. (Actually, the woman told me I'd failed. So I promptly burst into tears, mumbling something about the baby and school starting tomorrow. Bizarrely, she changed her mind and passed me. That's the power of youth for ya.). But I truly learned to drive after I got the license—with Maia in a car seat in the back. Later, when she found a plastic car in a cousin’s back yard, she jumped behind the wheel and started muttering "shit! shit!" because she understood that this was how you drive.
I never became a fabulous driver, but I easily learned to funnell my growing control issues into this new task. I'm a good sport about doing the driving on a long trip. A really good sport. I won't let you take the wheel for more than five miles—not even that if Maia's in the car. Hell--I've internalized this mama thing as well as the next gal and that means that if we're gonna to go down, it’s going to be my fault, all right?
And so it's just a little bit surreal and a whole lot stressful now that my daughter is learning to drive. I asked baby-Maia to (unknowingly) put her life on the line through every transition into my own adulthood, but I never thought about the fact that I might have to one day do the same for woman-Maia. She's only a few years shy of the age I was when I had her, but I've spent these last sixteen years training myself to be as insanely accountable as the world would hold me for every wrong turn I made as a mom that I find it excruciating to begin to release that accountability—even to her. But here we are. It's just the two of us in the car again. My high school students have warned me that even good parents make bad sex educators and bad driving educators, but here we are. "Shit!" And it's still me saying "Shit!" But I'm in the passenger's seat now. "A person!"
"I see them, Mom."
"Red light!"
"Yes, Mom. It’s a block away."
"Slow down!"
"I’m already ten miles under the speed limit. I’ll get pulled over if I go any slower."
I find friends willing to teach my daughter to drive, but she rejects the ideas. "I want you to teach me. I'm with you all of the time."
"You don't think I’m a sucky driving teacher?"
"Well..."
And I know I am. A sucky driving teacher. But a friend might be able to come over once a week,—if she’s going to get day-to-day driving experience, it's going to be during our regular taxi-ing hours together.
So, I may have to get a prescription for anti-anxiety meds yet, 'cause this part of our little parenting journey is freaking stressful.
The traveling years presented no particular opportunity or necessity to learn to drive. There are trains and busses and boats everywhere but America. So, it wasn't until I enrolled in college in California and they told me that I couldn't live with a kid in the dorms that it happened: Shit. I need a car. My paternal grandparents, having denied a plea to help me pay for college, called in a surprise offer of $3,000 for a car. I spent $1,000 on the deposit for our new off-campus apartment, $1,000 on the first two months rent, and $1,000 on a rusty Dodge Colt that would burst into flames within a couple of years. But right then it wasn't on fire and it was mine. I figured out how to operate the thing well enough to pass the driving test. (Actually, the woman told me I'd failed. So I promptly burst into tears, mumbling something about the baby and school starting tomorrow. Bizarrely, she changed her mind and passed me. That's the power of youth for ya.). But I truly learned to drive after I got the license—with Maia in a car seat in the back. Later, when she found a plastic car in a cousin’s back yard, she jumped behind the wheel and started muttering "shit! shit!" because she understood that this was how you drive.
I never became a fabulous driver, but I easily learned to funnell my growing control issues into this new task. I'm a good sport about doing the driving on a long trip. A really good sport. I won't let you take the wheel for more than five miles—not even that if Maia's in the car. Hell--I've internalized this mama thing as well as the next gal and that means that if we're gonna to go down, it’s going to be my fault, all right?
And so it's just a little bit surreal and a whole lot stressful now that my daughter is learning to drive. I asked baby-Maia to (unknowingly) put her life on the line through every transition into my own adulthood, but I never thought about the fact that I might have to one day do the same for woman-Maia. She's only a few years shy of the age I was when I had her, but I've spent these last sixteen years training myself to be as insanely accountable as the world would hold me for every wrong turn I made as a mom that I find it excruciating to begin to release that accountability—even to her. But here we are. It's just the two of us in the car again. My high school students have warned me that even good parents make bad sex educators and bad driving educators, but here we are. "Shit!" And it's still me saying "Shit!" But I'm in the passenger's seat now. "A person!"
"I see them, Mom."
"Red light!"
"Yes, Mom. It’s a block away."
"Slow down!"
"I’m already ten miles under the speed limit. I’ll get pulled over if I go any slower."
I find friends willing to teach my daughter to drive, but she rejects the ideas. "I want you to teach me. I'm with you all of the time."
"You don't think I’m a sucky driving teacher?"
"Well..."
And I know I am. A sucky driving teacher. But a friend might be able to come over once a week,—if she’s going to get day-to-day driving experience, it's going to be during our regular taxi-ing hours together.
So, I may have to get a prescription for anti-anxiety meds yet, 'cause this part of our little parenting journey is freaking stressful.
posted by Contact at 7:10 AM
7 Comments:
Wow, can I relate. At 41 I still don't have my license and honestly, I am scared shitless to drive. A deep, dark secret of mine though not so secret anymore! I usually give the "I live in NYC so a car is more trouble than it is worth" rap but the truth is much darker.
And just the thought of my kids driving......scary but actually kinda cool too.
Oh man Ariel, I am going through the same thing with Iyende. I think if we get through this somebody ought to give us super mama of the year award, LOL
me too!
I took my driving test when dd was one month old - the driver instructor had lost her baby to some terrible thing and we talked the whole time I drived - she bonding with me cuz she saw my mom hold my baby while I did this.
I couldn't drive for shit, but she simply told me what to do, as she urgently felt the need to confide in me as I took the test.
So thats how I got my liscence. I didn't really learn how to drive or have a car until I went to college though.
I *will* not teach dd and she asks me ALL the time. I tried to teach her how to ride a bike - and tramatized her. She still does not know how to ride a bike to this day. I am very scared of bikes and cars and I don't want to do the same thing and pass my fear along to her.
I have a friend lined up to do it - who is the driving goddess. All I got to do is watch her kids and she'll teach my kid.
I honest to god could not take it! I think its the scariest concept in the whole freaking world, the last part of growing up kid - that we haven't surmounted yet.
I might go back on my word and drive with her - but only in an empty parking lot. Because of the same reason, she's with me all the time and really wants me to go out with her. I think she also knows with my timidity I won't expect anything out of her, not like other people who think this death defying thing we call driving is a "of course" normal part of life.
did that post?
Ooh, this is scary. Mollie will start driving in about... 61 days, give or take (NOT that anyone is COUNTING or anything!). It's so weird. Weren't they both in preschool about two years ago? Aughhhh!
My unusually responsible seventeen year old son reports in to me regularly on fellow drivers. He unequivocally states that in his humble experience, girls get in the greater number of accidents. This fact does not equal up with girls' lower rates on their car insurance.(Boys are far higher) It is because we talk too much, he wonders? And I wonder. That we are easily distracted? We laugh too easily, too well? The son is a veritable scientist and means no sexism by his remarks. Just the facts, ma'am. Also, to contraindicate what I've just said, this past weekend his girlfriend's family from Beaverton lost their lives in a car wreck in eastern Oregon in a car driven by a highly seasoned male driver. A dad 51 yrs whose birthday is 23rd Feb, the mom and their fifteen year old son -- Dead in an instant. Father slipped for no apparent reason into the other lane, all killed by a large SUV. A good Catholic family so the daughter left behind has that much. Funeral at Mt Angel Abbey on Monday. Pray for them,esp the daughter still here. And I should add: may your daughter's guardian angel be with her whenever she drives!
You are so brave. I am hoping that Texas will outlaw teen driving before my eldest is old enough to help back me up. There's no chance we could afford to insure a teen or get them cars anyway. I definitely would not have the nerve to teach them though.
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