When I get in on the passenger side, I anchor my fake brake foot on the floor hump to my right. Is it perhaps a fake brake platform built into all Toyota vans? All of their vehicles?
I used to just get in and put my feet in front of me, like I would as a passenger in anyone’s car. But the movement of my feet during the ride distracted Liam, my 16-year-old son. As we came to a stoplight during his third hour of driving, he caught me.
“Mom, are you fake braking on your side? That’s very distracting! I can see your foot move out of the corner of my eye every time you do that.”
Hence my foot being stuck to the fake brake platform at the beginning of our drives when Liam is at the wheel.
We are now in hour number eight driving together as tracked by his phone app called “Road Ready.” Before we start our drives, he opens the app on his phone and pushes “start”; then the app starts a stopwatch that runs until Liam switches it off at the end of the drive. Before logging out of the app, he can identify what kind of a drive it was: day or night; local roads or highway; rainy or sunny. Putting 40 hours of practice in, plus twelve hours of driver’s ed, is the goal before January when Liam can apply for his license.
Liam is not overly excited about driving, so I’m the one to prompt practice sessions. Despite being inside, very warm and cozy, on a quiet November Sunday afternoon, I made the suggestion that we go for a drive. That transition was akin to getting sardines out of a tin can with a rusty can opener and forcing them onto a plate with a bent-tined fork.
I couldn’t think of where to direct the drive; I settled on the four different routes from our house to CVS. Starting with small side streets and graduating to the main thoroughfares in town, we drove to and from CVS four times. On Main Street, we pulled up behind another car waiting to turn left at a green light. Finally, that car made the turn and Liam started to follow suit. I tried to engage my fake brake, but it failed. “Wait… Stop…” I calmly directed. This is why my sons learn to drive with me instead of my husband: My stoic nature, born of my Iowan ancestry, keeps my emotions even keel.
On mornings that I take Liam to school, he’s now driving us; these drives are a sure way to rack up about 20 minutes a day. Even though we take the same route every day, there are endless challenges: main thoroughfares that we cross, righthand turns from diagonal roads onto straightaways, left hand turns with the windshield column on the right creating a wide blind spot that blocks the view of traffic, and constant reading of who has right of way at intersections. As I chatter away about what to do in different situations, I realize how much gray there is between the black and white laws of the road.
There were no major incidents on the way to school this morning, yet when we arrived at school, I felt exhausted. From a 20 minute eventless drive? Perhaps maintaining heightened senses for a straight 20 minutes? Perhaps not so much relating to this specific drive but rather to the undercurrent of acknowledging this is a major step toward Liam’s independence?
In Iowa, kids can get their school permit when they turn fourteen. With this permit, they are able to drive by themselves directly to and from school, with no passengers, except siblings. So at fourteen, I was driving eight miles to school, and it took less than fifteen minutes. I drove 30 mph or so south on our gravel road a couple of miles to the stop sign where I turned right. Then at 55 mph, I followed that blacktop, which is dotted with a couple of farmsteads amidst acres and acres of fields, a couple of miles to the stop sign where I turned left. I followed that blacktop, again past a few farmsteads and lots of wide open fields, for a few miles to the stop sign on the north edge of town where I turned right. Then, in less than a block, I turned left and was at the school.
Liam’s school is six miles from our house and can take up to a half hour to get there. This morning Liam commented on how ugly cars were; I said their appearance never did much for me. As long as I have a reliable transport, I’m not too concerned about what it looks like. However, that wasn’t what Liam was talking about. “Just look at them, Mom. They’re parked at house after house after house. There are just so many of them! They are like cockroaches.”
“I think you might be happy living in a little house next to Grandpa and Grandma in Iowa.”
“No, it’s too smelly to live there,” Liam said.
And there are too many cars here. When that final burst of independence happens, I wonder what kind of a road Liam will find himself driving every day?