Driving force

     I drove all over the City last weekend, searched for parking for what seemed like hours, parallel parked in heavy traffic, picked my way through hordes of tourists, crossed two bridges, crossed Market Street even, and I only once turned the wrong way down a one-way street…in the Tenderloin…but mostly (whew) I kept my cool. It was a driving triumph. Driving with a car full of people in a busy city for two straight days isn’t something I normally do. Country roads are my usual course; it felt good to challenge the comfort zone--it’s that time-of-life thing again--and I know driving in tough circumstances will get even tougher the less I do it. I suppose it could happen anytime to anyone, but midlife is the classic fulcrum: lean one way and you are in contraction mode, but let go and lean the other direction, and you can swing open on your hinge. I guess we shouldn’t fear the inevitable crossroads, life is physics, it’s the fulcrum that supplies the capability for action.


Crossroads and driving are themes around here. Sam is learning to drive. It’s a major passage of parenting, and I realize we are now teaching him how to leave. I’m trying not to give too much attention to the fact that he shows more enthusiasm for the leaving skills than anything we’ve ever tried to teach him so far. But I can’t help notice the contrast, for Sam, driving isn’t one of life’s fulcrums, it’s not a crossroads, it’s pure trajectory. There’s less than three years to launch and I feel the pressure to teach him everything he needs to know, which I know isn’t possible, or even likely, we learn most of life’s lessons on our own. He’s heading toward 16 and he tells me the truth. My words of wisdom are generally the kiss of death to his psyche. He is, as ever, as much the teacher as the student, passenger and now driver, and like all teenagers, I imagine, as much frustrating as inspiring. I could never explain to him how the juxtaposition of our lives’ paths sharpens the focus of everything for me. How raising someone places you at once in the past, present and future. How in so many ways I see him beginning to make ripples on the pond. He’s starting to live in ever expanding concentric circles. It’s the flow. It’s a beginning of beginnings. It’s as it should be. MK