How Is My Driving?

I have a flip-floppy relationship with cars. Growing up in the suburbs, yes, all car all the time. Mom chauffered us faithfully, in a series of Chevy station wagons (our family also has terrible luck with cars; due to thefts and accidents, we've gone through cars like most people go through shoes). But then, in the 9th grade, I was off to boarding school; so no car for me, no teenage joy rides or tailgate parties (in fact, although I grew up in the Washington, DC area, I know my way around about 5 other cities, including Paris and Joahnnesburg, better than DC, because I never lived there as a driving or adult being).

College and a few years extra in New York City. Again no car. Then, a move to Seattle, and I learned, at the ripe old age of 23, how to drive. I mean, I knew how to drive; but I really became a driving person, a person who finds her way around a place by car (and parallel parks in a stick-shift on steep inclines). And also learned about cars themselves, about repair costs and insurance, about all-wheel drive, and about gas prices and oil consumption.

Back to NYC. Back to the glorious bargain that is the NYC MTA unlimited metro pass, back to wonderful, dense, environmentally-friendly pedestrian life.

Then, the big life bust-up, i.e. city-country commuting. So now, me and my car, my '95 Saturn with manual everything and 177k miles on it, worth well-less than the insurance premium I pay and certainly much less than the repair work that's gone into it; we are like this.

Today, day two in the country, a quick overnighter, arrived yesterday about noon, heading back later this evening. I don't often do this - zip out for less than 48 hours - but my family trip displaced my normal stay, and it's hot and dry, and things need tending to out here. Plus, the truth is, the driving is not taxing, it is the opposite; long-distance driving is very restorative, it is peace time, it is quiet and thinking time, it is book-on-tape and music-fill-my-head (chasing out stressful and tangled thoughts and replacing them with rhythm and beat and movement) time. Weirdly - and I suppose this says something about me - I am never more at rest than when I am in transit.

And sometimes, like yesterday, the drive is particularly fruitful. I conducted some business by cell phone. I listened to the news to catch up on current events, and then to several chapters of a book I am enjoying. And then, because for whatever reason my mind felt open and rested and fertile, a feast - a veritable cornucopia of ideas related to the novel I am writing and another book which is germinating - came pouring forth. And now this is where the driving gets a little scary. These thoughts and words and gems needed to be jotted down. I am on the highway, I am reaching over to my bag and fishing for a piece of paper (WHY don't I carry a small notebook with me?), I fish and rummage and find a pen but no paper, I start writing cryptic acronyms on my hand, trusting that I will remember what they stand for; but my hand is kind of warm and sweaty, so this isn't really working. I reach over and fish around some more, I find a receipt which I flip over, to write on the back. I am also having to downshift, because now I am in a construction zone, and the lanes have narrowed, there are orange cones to one side of me and a concrete construction wall to the other, I am shifting and writing and breaking and this is really not such a good idea, but oh well... you do what you gotta do.

I am of course ambivalent about all this driving, all this fuel. But my Saturn gets 35 miles per gallon, which makes me quite happy; and a full tank costs me about $25 these days, gets me to the country and back just about twice. It could be worse. And, once I'm here, I'm here. The car pretty much sits, except for the occasional run to the General Store for sundries or the paper. At any rate, I drive now. And if my car were a person, I think it (she?) would be a pretty happy person, someone who feels stretched to her limits and fulfilling her purpose - responsibly, and with gusto.