The Driving Lesson

Well, it’s finally come to pass – the youngest granddaughter is now driving. We knew the day would come, used to joke about it when she was a little child just learning how to ride a two-wheeler. Now she’s driving my car.

I think it’s pretty darn brave of me to sit in the passenger seat giving full control of not only my new car but my very life and well, hers too, as we s-l-o-w-l-y drive up and down the country roads of the Tri-Town area.

Her biggest fear is not causing bodily harm to us but, instead, damaging the car and creating a financial burden. I really couldn’t care less about the car exchanging my well-placed anxiety on the human factor. But that may be the difference between our chronological ages. Being older, I worry about life; she, being younger, believes life is endless. Deep sigh.

Anyway, she is driving and I am the passenger.

You notice different things from the passenger’s seat – like how close the trees are along curvy roads in Rochester or the deep gullies gouged out by decades of stormwater runoff. I can’t stop my vivid imagination from wondering how horrible it would be if a second from now the tire on my side got sucked into the breach. It doesn’t happen. I murmur, “Hey, you are doing really well.” She responds, “I know.”

The shingled and clapboard homes, the elongated pastures, the occasional flower stands and, yes, the thick trees sweep past our field of vision as we cruise along at 35 miles per hour. It becomes restful until a driver comes up behind us seeming to want to push our car along faster while up ahead is a bicyclist who can’t imagine the level of danger he is in.

Nothing happens. I say, “Don’t worry about that car. Just watch out for the guy on the bike.” She responds, “I know.”

Soon enough, the driver that was in a hurry turns off and is no longer threatening to drive right over us, and the bicyclist is still pedaling merrily along. A memory floats in to fill the ambient silence.

When this young woman was a baby and I was babysitting while her parents labored away, in order to get her to take a nap, I’d often put her in the car and drive her around.

Up and down Interstate 195 from the Mattapoisett to the Marion exit and back again, I’d gently maneuver the mini-van as I intermittently peeked in the rearview mirror for that moment when her little head would at last tilt to the side and she, in blissful baby-sleep, would finally nap.

I’d return home with my sleeping sweetheart, drive into our back lot, park the van under a shady tree and turn off the engine. For the next hour or so, I could read my book while she napped, or more often than not, I’d nap too.

During these occasions if my husband was home, he’d stealthily creep up to the driver’s door and whisper through the half-opened window, “Do you need anything?” No, I didn’t need a thing. As a grandparent, you know the importance of relishing the moment, the sheer unadulterated joy of watching a sleeping child. It only lasts forever in one’s mind.

Pulling out of my reverie, I realize she’s driving 40 miles per hour in a posted 40 mile per hour zone. I say, “Better to go a bit slower on this curvy road.” She responds, “I know,” and slows the car down to 35.

I want to tell her so many things. I want to impart all I’ve learned these six plus decades, all the wins and losses, how to process some of life’s misfortunes, how to build on one’s successes, how to drive this car expertly. I settle on the driving lesson.

Probably one of the most difficult aspects of being a parent or grandparent is knowing and accepting that we can’t deliver our children into adulthood without bumps and bruises. A very smart older woman once told me when I was still a young, thoroughly inexperienced mother that to protect one’s child from life’s blows was tantamount to being a bad parent. Simply put, they wouldn’t build the emotional muscles needed to bear up under the weight of all that was to come. I responded, “I know.”

Like the seventeen year old driving the car, I didn’t know then, but I sure know now.

Maybe one day she’ll reflect on the hours we drove around as she built up her driving skills and understand what I really wanted to say but didn’t, “The driving lessons are never really over.” Perhaps she’ll think, “I know – now.”

By Marilou Newell