Having a kid who drives was terrifying at first. I was an absolute disaster the first time Rowan drove off alone – pacing, biting my nails, sitting down only to jump back up again and resume pacing and biting my nails. She was gone for about an hour – long enough to drive over to her boyfriend’s house, triumphantly show him her license, and drive home – but it felt like an entire lifetime. When she pulled into the driveway, I was waiting on the porch, still pacing.
For about the next month, I kept my anxiety better hidden every time she drove away, but I still felt like I didn’t breathe again fully until she was safely back home, car parked neatly at the curb, car keys on the table by the door.
And then, after awhile, I got used to it. One night, she texted that she was about to leave a friend’s house to drive home and my pulse didn’t go up at all.
“OK, be safe,” I texted back from the bathtub, where I was reading a terrible mystery novel. “Leftovers from dinner are in the fridge.”
It felt liberating, like I’d unlocked a whole new level of parenting. My kid was independent enough to get safely home and heat up dinner for herself, and I didn’t even have to get out of the tub.
But she had surgery on her right knee in January – a medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction with cadaver tendon and a trochleoplasty, to be exact – and she has not yet been cleared to drive again.
So, just like that, we’re back to square one. Except now, instead of being anxious about her driving, I’m exhausted from driving her. And Georgia. And my father, who is 87 and no longer drives. And occasionally one of their friends who needs a ride.
When you combine Rowan’s busy social life, as she tries to fit in every party, every parade, every festival she can before she leaves for college, with Georgia’s extracurricular activities (track, robotics, drama) with the constant errands I have to run for my dad, I feel like I am more or less living in my car these days.
A normal day sees me driving from Broadmoor to Gentilly to Mid-City to Uptown to Mid-City to Broadmoor to Gentilly to Broadmoor – and that’s a day without many side trips. If someone forgets a book, has a doctor’s appointment, or realizes they have a meeting they “absolutely told me about” but I have no memory of, the whole system collapses into chaos.
At this point, I have a favorite gas station (Costco unless I’m in a true hurry and then it’s the discount gas station at Orleans and Broad, which is easily accessible from almost all of my daily routes), a preferred drive-thru for iced coffee (PJ’s on Leon C. Simon, just down the street from my work and conveniently located near a Rouses in case we’re out of milk or wine or some other crucial item), a podcast playlist (“Casefile” for longer drive and “Dark Down East” for shorter ones), and a deep knowledge of which streets to avoid at 3 p.m. (all of them). My car has become a mobile command center, full of snacks and snack wrappers, phone chargers, a pile of hoodies, napkins with various fast food logos crammed in the glove box to use as tissues in a pinch, empty LaCroix cans, and a backseat otherwise littered with evidence of a life constantly in transit.
I know this phase won’t last forever — eventually Rowan will complete physical therapy and be approved to drive again, and then, soon enough, she’ll be gone. And not long after that, Georgia will be the one grabbing the keys and driving away, leaving me pacing back and forth on the porch, counting the minutes until she is safely home again.
It’s hard to imagine that I will one day miss the gridlock of Broad Street, with my kids bickering over who liked Chappell Roan first, but I know I will. Because as exhausting as it is, this constant motion means they’re still here, still mine to drive, still filling the car with music and crumbs and stories from their day. And even if I’d rather be reading a book in the bathtub, I’d be crazy not to realize that this time together is, in fact, a gift.
