Driving

Or freedom in Central Texas at sixteen

This once-weekly newsletter has gotten spotty, I know. I’m wrestling with…not necessarily writer’s block but more like writer’s lack of focus. I’m trying not to let my all-or-none nature get in my way, though, so spotty it is. Here’s a bit on what getting your driver’s license means to a teenager in Central Texas.

Yesterday, my oldest “child” backed out of the driveway, waved to me, and drove off down the road for the first time without any adult supervision. A smile spread across my face — one I felt in the depths of my heart — as I raised my hand to wave back in the cool, sunny afternoon air. As he departed to go pick up a friend, he was grinning, too.

I was excited for him, remembering what it felt like, as a teen, to finally be in full charge of my comings and goings — not to have to wait on a parent to take me or pick me up. To have the freedom to play my own music, adjust the air vents how I wanted and go wherever I felt like going, even if that was just driving around. In this part of the country, where we are far enough away from everything to make public transportation impractical, getting a driver’s license is a coming-of-age ritual as much as it is a practical event. I was not always so thrilled for him, though.

As Jack approached the age at which he could start learning to drive, I was nervous. My baby was about to strap himself into a one-and-a-half-ton machine and hurtle himself down the road willy-nilly with a bunch of other jokers throwing themselves around in other one-and-a-half-ton machines. The death trap, a.k.a., Ranch Road 620, loomed in my mind.

This road, as it’s name indicates, was built decades ago as a way for ranchers to get around in the rural-ness west of Austin. The two lanes each way, divided by a suicide lane, were more than sufficient back when the most prominent building out here was a gas station. Now that suburban neighborhoods sprawl over the hills and the inevitable Targets and Starbucks and HEBs and fast food places and for some reason, many, many mattress stores and brick-and-mortar banks have populated the roadsides, that suicide lane is earning its name. Jack’s kindergarten teacher was killed on this road, albeit by a very drunk driver and not the road itself, but still, it doesn’t give me warm fuzzies about my now-teenage kid bopping around out there on his way to get smoothies with soccer buddies.

As we taught him to drive, however, and spent time in the car together — first with me gripping the oh-shit handle in anticipation of calamities that never happened, then more relaxed as he grasped the concepts of braking distance and the fact that other people aren’t always going to do what you expect in their cars — my fear ebbed away and was replaced by excited anticipation.

He could drive himself to soccer practice across town.

No more waiting for the bus at the high school Friday night after soccer games. He could drive himself home.

I was about to get back hours of my time.

As his sixteenth birthday approached, though, I checked myself. I have, in the past, gotten so caught up in anticipating the next great thing, I’ve forgotten to notice what I was losing. All those hours in the car together, when he and his friends in the back seat seemed to forget I was there and I got to be a fly on the wall during their conversations. When it was just the two of us and, captive in a small space together, we had intimate conversations — silly or serious — or just sat in comfortable silence together.

The last time I drove him and a friend up to the school stadium so they could play soccer, I noticed. I thought, this is likely the last time. The last time they would pile into my car with all of their gear, the last time one of his friends would call “thanks!” over his shoulder as they unloaded themselves. I watched as they walked away from my car, exchanging words with each other, intent on their training, the mom and the car forgotten. I smiled.

I was glad I thought to notice, glad I thought to sit in that moment and feel it — both the sadness of the loss of those moments together in the car and the excitement of what was to come — a new freedom for both of us.

His getting his license was very much a group project that took a little over a year, start to finish. Navigating parent-taught driver education and the bureaucracy of the Texas DPS was somewhat stressful, and now that it is over, I can exhale. We have accomplished it, this rite of passage. He is free to drive where he pleases, when he pleases (so long as he’s home by midnight, per Texas law for people under 18).

It also means he is free to make his own mistakes. It came to me the other day, and I said it out loud to Jason: “One of these days, he’s going to hit something.” He’s a cautious kid and a good driver, but he’s still just sixteen, and I remember what it felt like to be that age. I was also cautious, but I could also be impatient and impulsive. It comes with the territory.

At this point, I am mostly happy for him and us with our newfound parental freedom and his newfound teenager autonomy. It is right and good and time for this to happen. My worry has subsided to more of a side dish, a garnish, to my overall satisfaction. That freedom, at his age, is such an amazing feeling. As a kid who took a lot for granted, even I appreciated it when it was my turn to take the keys and back out of the driveway on my own. Despite whatever nervousness I have about it, I would never deprive him of that glorious feeling

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