There are signs that our van is getting old. Really old. The paint is peeling off the outside. The upholstery is peeling off the inside. In a crate next to the driver’s seat, I carry essential supplies - motor oil, water for the radiator, and my cassette tapes from college. Ok, so the cassette tapes aren’t essential, but I think it’s significant that the van is the only place where I can listen to them anymore. When the little electronic key fob thingy disintegrated, I said to my husband, “Ok, I have read the signs, and the signs say it’s time for a new car.” He thought about it for a minute, and then said, “Nope, it’s time for a new key fob.”
Postscript: Shortly after I wrote this, the van’s radiator exploded. Now that’s a sign!
Teaching my daughter to drive may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a parent, and that includes the 33 hours of labor followed by the C-section with which she entered the world. And I have to confess that I don’t think it’s her. It’s me. If I were teaching me to drive, I would stop the car, get out, walk around to the passenger side, remove me from the car, and beat me to a bloody pulp. I am SO annoying. So annoying that I give hitherto unfathomed depth and meaning to the word. I know it, and yet I can’t help myself.
She handles it pretty well, considering.
I won’t even bother to write much about how my right leg has a permanent cramp from shoving my foot to the floor on the imaginary brake; I understand that’s a common phenomenon for parents. And I suppose many parents have caught themselves involuntarily crying out, “Brake!”
I don’t do that. I yell, “Brake! Brake! BRAAAAAKE - for the love of God and all that’s holy!” At every intersection.
The other night as she overcorrected on a turn, and overcorrected, and overcorrected again, I lost my head. I am ashamed to say that I actually screamed out, “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing?!!!!” I was so rattled that when we got home, and someone dropped something, I yelled it out again - “Jesus Christ!”
Her brother, a complete smart mouth, said, “Oh, is Jesus Christ here?”
My daughter replied, “Yeah. He was in the car, too.”
So she still has a sense of humor. She’s holding up way better than I am. I have a crick in my back because I spend every trip leaning over to the left, away from the door on my side, because in my opinion, she is far too close to the parked cars. In theory, I know that expecting her to keep at least 6 feet away from them is unreasonable. In practice, it’s the only way I can handle it. I have developed a nervous twitch that starts whenever she’s in the vicinity of the car keys. I have no fingernails left on my left hand; I’ve chewed them all off. On my right hand, they still look pretty good, because I’m so busy hanging on to the door handle for dear life that I can’t get at them.
On the plus side, my relationship with God is much stronger lately, in spite of the little “J C” incident, because I spend so much more time in prayer - every driving lesson.
