Sharing Saturday
This morning, instead of driving to my gym (which, I will add, is around the corner) I walked. It was a gorgeous early summer morning, and on my walk, I:
- Saw the orange June lilies starting to bloom
- Crushed mulberries under my sneakers
- Observed several teens slinking up the hill to the high school bus stop, 6:30 am being just too early for them to look anything but bedraggled
- Nodded hello to several neighbors with dogs, new babies, and other things that might have them up so early
- Peered into the window where I got to see the beginnings of a beautiful glass tile mosaic that is being created by the community to be mounted on the wall that underlies my work-out place.
Had I driven, I would have missed all of this.
And yet, my preference is to drive, mainly because, I tell myself, I don't have time to walk. Around. The. Corner.
I have become a car slut.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I was one of those odd New Yorkers who didn't learn how to drive as a teen. Or in my 20s. I walked and took public transportation everywhere.
I had all sorts of reasons not to drive, the subway being chief among them. I also had an utter, sheer terror of being behind the wheel. I knew I was never going to live anywhere except a place where I could use public transportation, so why rock the boat (or the steering wheel)?
(A digression: my mother, a lifelong New Yorker, modeled bad behavior by never learning how to drive. This became become problematic in her later years, when New York City imposed strict anti-smoking rules and my mother, a lifelong smoker, was pissed. For about eight years, she planned vacations to test out possible new places to live out her retirement. Places where, she thought, in a twisted use of logic, she might be able to smoke freely. Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina – tobacco state. California – liberal intelligencia (but she forgot about the health nuts.) El Paso, Texas – a sentimental favorite, where she had lived when my father was stationed in Korea, but today it is nothing but strip malls.
As it turned out, all the urban-like areas she checked out were also enacting anti-smoking regulations. But the real kicker was that in any other city in the country, no matter how urban, she would HAVE TO DRIVE.
So that was the end of the new cable show we were planning, long before reality TV: "Alice: In Search of a Smoke.")
Back to me. When my husband and I bought our house, the critical aspect for me was location, location, location. I had to be within walking distance of the metro, and I had to live near a walkable shopping district. We managed to find both these things and I settled into my ¾ mile walk to and from Metro every day. I would wait until the weekends and have my husband drive us to the grocery store, which, sadly, was not part of our quaint little downtown area.
Then we decided to start our family. My husband looked at me, and in all seriousness said, "We cannot start a family until you learn how to drive."
Was he kidding? He was going to BLACKMAIL me into driving?
But I knew he was right. Deep down, I knew that I couldn’t balance a baby in a sling and several grocery bags filled with diapers and baby food, not to mention adult food, on the Metro. Much as I wanted to argue that in a real city like New York, everyone schleps, baby or no. But where we live, although I like to pretend that there's an urban vibe, the honest truth is I live in the suburbs.
Ouch.
So I got up the gumption, brushed off the dusty license (that I had actually somehow earned two years earlier and then immediately swore I would never drive again) and began to drive. I realized that I would be most comfortable in my own vehicle, without having to worry about scratches, dents, total annihilation and destruction of a vehicle …
So for my birthday, my husband bought me a $1,100 red Chevy Nova. It was fabulous. It was a tiny clunker, and I couldn't care less what happened to it. I drove it around, my pregnant belly barely fitting behind the wheel. I learned how to navigate the Beltway (but only when absolutely necessary) and I learned how to park (sort of.) I awaited our new arrival with glee – I was actually going to be like all the other moms and be able to cart my baby around to play groups and supermarkets. Yee haw!
When my son arrived, I really began my life as a driving mom. There was the time that I neglected to buckle in his car seat and when I heard a mewl from the back seat, I noticed that he was lying on his side in the baby bucket, not amused. And driving to the pre-school parking lot was a lesson in mortification. My little car was swamped by the fleet of minivans. I felt vanquished but cool. But generally speaking, we had a symbiotic relationship with the Nova. It got us where we needed to go.
Child number two arrived, and I needed something a little more substantial. Not yet willing to trade up to a minivan, a forest green Camry took us through the next couple of years, but to be honest, it was such a boring car, I never liked driving it. When child number three arrived two years later, I took the plunge. Purple metallic minivan, and I was ready to take on the mommy world. No longer was I embarrassed in the pre-school parking lot. I was a real driving mom. With bumper stickers.
Unfortunately, I had unknowingly bought a lemon, and the minivan had a few little quirks, like the fact that the power steering belt fell off in the rain. I had a number of instances where I was hauling the steering wheel with all my strength just to get the car back to the shop. The battery died. So did the transmission. Much as I loved my mom mobile, the whole thing shuddered and came to a complete stop the day I had run out to get my kids ice cream at 6 in the morning for International Ice Cream for Breakfast day, and I had to trudge home about ½ mile with 2 gallons on ice cream in my arms on a snowy, icy winter day.
Bye bye minivan. Hello Matrix! We decided that we could no longer justify a huge, gas guzzling car, even though we were a family of five who could really use the room. So we went with a small, cheap, cute car, and even though my kids have to hold in their stomachs and have trouble breathing when all three are in the back seat and we can never carpool, I'm happy that we're doing our little part for the environment.
The thing that gets me about being a two-car family is how much I miss street life. When I was a walker, I noticed things around me on a daily basis, much like the litany I described above. Now that I'm a car slut and can't live without my wheels, miss out on a lot.
Over the winter we had two severe blizzards which knocked out power and kept cars off the streets for days. Our street wasn't plowed for close to a week. I was effectively grounded – not for all the chocolate in Belgium could you have gotten me to be among the first to zigzag up our steep, neighborhood hills in my little tin can without snow tires.
So I strapped on a backpack and walked up to town to procure essentials at the local food co-op. Then I crossed town and made a bee-line for the liquor store, another essential. I stopped in a coffee shop for hot chocolate (a third essential) and ran into the video store for movies to see us through. Then I traipsed back down the hill and home. I repeated this expedition several times while we were snowbound.
I began to wonder if I could keep it up once the streets were clear again. I would save gas, protect the environment, get needed exercise and teach my children the value of making an effort to help the family. I envisioned us all with backpacks on, bringing home the bread and milk and veggies a couple of times a week. We could become a one-car family and really make a statement.
Then I fell back to earth. I have three children, with three sets of activities. I work, and often have two meetings in diametrically opposed sides of the county in one day. We attend a synagogue that is half an hour drive from our house. And I buy $200 worth of groceries a week.
None of it added up.
So I am back to loading up the back of my (small) car with reusable shopping bags, and schlepping my children to sports and parties and school events. I even drive downtown instead of taking the metro on the one day a week I work down there, as it allows me to return home exquisitely to make it back a second before the school bus does.
So I am trapped. I am a car slut by virtue of my life choices. The good news about this is that should I ever decide to explore other cities in which to live, I, unlike my mother, would be able to get myself around (once I got over my new city driving fears.)
But I might wind up missing a lot of interesting things on the ground.
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