“Is it OK if C. stays with you this weekend?” my younger daughter asked.
“Absolutely,” I replied, always delighted to have a grandkid spend time with me.
Teenagers come with fewer instructions than they did when they were little. “She might go to a party and be home by 11:30; she’ll feed the dog and cats; she should do homework on Sunday.” That was it.
“OK,” I said agreeably, little suspecting what else lay ahead.
Friday afternoon I went to pick C. up from her soccer game. Turned out another special person, N., needed a ride also. A bit of a nuisance to get someone in the back seat of a Jeep Wrangler, but the two of them could figure that out.
Then it happened.
“Can I drive, Grammy?”
I knew she had her learner’s permit, but driving? With me? Weren’t there some things only parents could do? “But N. is here,” I said by way of evasion.
“I’ve driven her before.” N. confirmed this. Sometimes a precedent can be so unhelpful.
We piled into the Jeep, and C. drove the short distance to N.’s house and then to her own house to feed the animals. There was a wide turn, a few wobbles, a couple of telephone poles closer to me than I preferred, but even in the growing dark, it went pretty well. Back at my house, I was feeling virtuous. I had done something special for my granddaughter—something almost as good as baking a delicious meal for her, which I never do and always feel guilty about. Now, I felt vindicated.
I had invited C. and N. to go to Solomon Pond Mall the next day. I was just finishing up with something, and C. said she’d wait for me outside. Done with whatever, I went out to the car—and there was C. sitting in the driver’s seat. “OK if I drive? I won’t take the highway. Merging is too scary for me.” What could I say? Anything other than yes would imply I didn’t trust her. And I did, didn’t I? I got into the passenger seat.
We picked up N. and headed out. “Oh, there’s someone behind me. He’s going to beep at me. I hate being beeped at,” C. rambled. “You have a right to drive at a speed you feel comfortable at,” I tried to reassure her. “But he’s going to get really mad.” “That’s his problem,” I said calmly, inwardly torn in my sympathies.
We had just turned onto East Bare Hill when ahead of us, spread abreast in our lane, were three girls on roller skis.
“They’re taking up the whole road,” said C. with annoyance. “Well, you can’t pass them,” I snapped as she came up on them and I stomped on my imaginary brake. “I know. But they need to move over. They’re clueless. I don’t want to beep.” “Just wait for a clear stretch,” I said. “The one on the right keeps turning around,” piped up N., “so they know we’re here.” “Do they go to Bromfield?” I asked, a question that makes sense only in a small town like Harvard. They didn’t. “Oh, they are so annoying,” C. kept repeating as she came up on them and dropped back a couple more times. I couldn’t have agreed more—they were infuriating—but I was trying to be a model of reason and patience. I didn’t see what else to do. Finally the road was straight, and I told C. to go for it. As we passed them, I made a pushing-to-the-right gesture with my hand. “Gram,” N. murmured, slouching in embarrassment.
We were doing well on a winding road in Bolton, when suddenly C. took a curve way too wide and we were in the oncoming lane. Fortunately, no one was oncoming. “That was bad,” C. rightly assessed. “Yeah,” I agreed, “ all it takes is one mistake like that. This is a death machine, you know.” Silence. Maybe I didn’t need to mention that.
A while later, C. let out a shrill yell that jolted N. in the back seat. “What happened?” she gasped. “Never swerve for a squirrel,” quoted C. by way of an answer. “OK,” I said, “but I don’t think your driver’s ed instructor meant scream for one instead. We had two more squirrel yells-and-misses on the trip.
As we approached an intersection, she asked in a bit of a panic, “Do I have to turn left?” I realized with chagrin that I had passed on to her mom, and now to C., a dread of turning left into traffic. In the future, she, too, will invent some excuse to her passengers for turning right, then turning left into a place to turn around and go back the way she needs to go.
The rotary was uneventful because there were no other cars, but we went through a red light on the road into the mall. “Oh, that was bad,” said C. “I couldn’t decide quick enough.” “Always slow as soon as you see amber,” I admonished, wondering how often I myself fail to follow this dictum.
Going home through Bolton center, C. maneuvered through lines of cars and costumed children walking on our side of the road. My right leg was twitching a bit but never needed to brake. As we came up on our left turn, there was a lot of traffic and only a blinking yellow light for the turn. I felt anxious for both of us. We sat a while and then C. found an opening and turned. “Wow, great job,” I said. Maybe there was left-turn hope for her, after all.
“I haven’t ever driven as much as this,” observed C., pulling into my driveway. “You’re doing really well,” I said.
The next day, feeling confident and relaxed, I automatically handed her the key to drive to her house. She backed out of my driveway, and suddenly, we found ourselves doing a backward U-turn in the road. “Sorry, sorry,” said C. in a panicked voice. “That was the gas instead of the brake.”
I’m going to start looking up some yummy dinner recipes and practice my cooking.
