When you are riding a roadbike downhill, you are going so fast you have to be aware of your surroundings every millisecond. You have to look out for debris in the road, for potholes, for ruts and glass and gravel. You have to watch for deer and squirrels. You have to check for cars behind you and cars approaching. You have to brake appropriately so you’re not too fast or crossing the median on a corner. You have to watch for stones and wet patches and sticks and cracks in the asphalt. Apart from that, you can really just zone out and get some thinking done.
Last Thursday’s ride, I found myself thinking about my daughter. She was in Paris, at the start of a 6-week backpacking tour of Europe with her boyfriend. This is really great and exciting and I am very thrilled for her and not at all terrified that my baby is six thousand miles away and I have no idea where or how she is most of the time. Plus France is recording its highest temperatures ever. It’s all fine, though, she’ll be fine.
On the day they left, I drove them to the airport. We took her Jeep because it is really fun to drive and because while she’s away I’m secretly going to use it when I’m sick of my goody-two-shoes electric car. As I was tooling through Marin, I got a quick tutorial from Jessie on the quirks of her vehicle. Oh mom, she said, right as the car made a huge screeching sound rounding a corner, my car screeches sometimes. Not sure why. Then, because it was 94 degrees, I tried to put the driver side window down. As it went down, a weird coiled sort of cable snaked creepily up and then the window disappeared and I could not get it back. That’s so strange, Jessie said. It’s never done that before. She needn’t have worried. Being the driver of old Jags for so long, I felt kind of comforted and at home. Any more quirks? I asked her, secretly hoping for something extra quirky. The gas gauge is broken, she said. This was not the kind of quirky I had hoped for.
We drove to Oakland Airport with the freeway wind howling through the open window. It didn’t matter. The mood in the car was upbeat. The teens were heading off on an intrepid world adventure and I was successfully ignoring the fact that I was about to say goodbye to them for six weeks and would have zero control over their destiny until August. Jessie turned the music up till it was loud enough we could hear it over the wind.
By the way mom, she said as I pulled in to the departures curb, sorry about how messy my car is. I pretended not to have noticed. I’m good at that, because I have been doing it about her bedroom for years. We hugged goodbye on the curb, I told them seriously how much fun I expected them to have, took a couple of pics of them looking fabulously young and intrepid, and then drove away. I only cried for about fifteen minutes.
Since they’ve been gone, I have been driving her car a lot. It’s just easier than dealing with the good-for-the-planet-but-how-far-can-I-really-drive electric car. Every time I get out of the Jeep, I take a few items of car trash with me. Bottles, ancient mechanic receipts, and tupperware containers full of science experiments. One was so bad I had to throw away the tupperware too. It was just too frightening to contemplate washing it out. Her car looks very minimally tidier now, but it’s still a work in progress. I just shut the door on her bedroom till she gets home.
The missives from Europe have been short and sweet. Mom, I just spent four hours trying to book a train from Amsterdam to Barcelona, can I use your card for flights? That was a yes, because the flights proved almost as cheap as train tickets and because I am a hopelessly unboundaried parent. Mom, the hotel lied about having WiFi. How will I know how much it costs to call you? I told her to just call. She went down to the hotel foyer where the WiFi was at least sporadically available. We talked for a few exciting transatlantic minutes about all the challenges of navigating Paris, and how wonderful and fun it was. They climbed the Eiffel Tower. They were off to the Louvre. They got lost, and it was okay. I felt a deep sense of satisfaction that my daughter is finding her way on the other side of the world.
Every morning, I light a candle for her safety. It burns during the time I’m getting ready to start work. Then I blow it out. I whisper be safe, Jessie and Alessandro, and head out to see my first patient.
When you are riding a roadbike downhill, you are sometimes going so fast that in a strange way, as tightly as you have to hold on, you also have to let go.
