My dad was the only driver in my family when I was growing up. He navigated our trips, somehow undistracted by the non-stop questions my sisters and I hurled at my parents from the back seat. Smoke from my dad’s unfiltered Camels wafted through the car, as sounds of the ballgame softly coming from the radio were ignored by all the disinterested female passengers. My sisters and I relentlessly asked, “are we there yet.”  Unperturbed by the incessant chatter, and with the single focus of our safe arrival my father simply continued to drive.

His family owed a gas station in Brooklyn, where my dad worked from the age of fourteen until he graduated law school in his early twenties.  With neither an interest in, nor an aptitude for anything mechanical  my father was left alone with my grandfather to help out at the station.

His two older brothers had been drafted, and left to serve in WWII. As a dutiful son, he changed oil, fixed flats, pumped gas and drove newly repaired cars out to waiting customers, long before he was a licensed driver. My uncles were each talented mechanics, and  took over the business after returning home from overseas. As business partners and friends they ran the station successfully for the next forty years, while my dad went on to practice law.

My father’s intrepid introduction to driving was the result of necessity. I learned to drive because I wanted to, and my dad taught me how. He was unflinching and patient, regardless of how many times I stopped short, or misjudged the distance of the curb when learning to parallel park. The first car I drove was a Fury. How apropos, as my ferocity to be independent was evident from the time I was a little girl.

After three failed attempts I passed my driving test at age sixteen. My family had one car and four drivers. Given that ratio, I rarely got the chance to drive at all. At eighteen I left for college, and never really got behind the wheel of a car again until I was in my early thirties.

After traveling the world, I moved back to New York, where I met the man I  would marry. My fiance owned a car in Manhattan…score! We took drives to Brooklyn to visit my parents, went on excursions upstate, and sometimes drove around the city with no particular destination. We were able to attend the occasional Bar Mitzvah of one of my cousins in Long Island because my soon to be husband owned a car. An Accord. That was a harmonious time in our relationship when we seemed to truly be in love. And then we married.

As an entertainment lawyer my then husband’s employment contract included the use of a car. A BMW. A vehicle classified by a single letter and number only, no name. I think it was a 740i. We lived downtown on the east side of Manhattan. He drove to work uptown, but I don’t remember ever driving that car.

After several years in the city we moved to Los Angeles with our baby. My daughter was the first grandchild in my family, so after a couple of months in California I took her back east to visit my parents. When I arrived home in LA there was a car parked outside our house, wrapped in a red ribbon, just like a television commercial. My husband bought me a car. An Explorer. Exploring invites discovery. I was in the cocooned position of being able to see how my new life in Los Angeles would unfold.

And again my husband had a car identified only by a series of numbers and letters. I almost never drove that car either. We arrived in Los Angeles with one child. Two years later I gave birth to another daughter, and two years after that I had another baby. We ordered a custom built Suburban for our growing family, a nine passenger behemoth. It was like driving an airplane. And there I was, knee deep in my suburban lifestyle.

On an ordinary Friday evening my husband’s whisper quiet car pulled into our secluded driveway. Early the next morning we left our daughters with the nanny, and went to run some errands using his car. Just after picking up his shirts from the drycleaners he pulled over and shut the engine. Our decade plus marriage was about to end – he said he was leaving. I don’t remember anything about the drive home. Our children were one, three, and five.

Several months later my children and I moved out of the house that had taken almost two years to have built. It seemed that just when the I had finally finished unpacking, I was putting everything back in boxes. The girls and I downsized to a much smaller house. One where I could easily hear them from every room. I didn’t want to drive the Suburban anymore.

My credit cards had been cancelled. Attached to my husband’s credit rating I didn’t exist without the title of Mrs., and without that I had no credit. Miraculously I was able to qualify for a car in my own name, but just barely. That next mode of transportation for my family was a Voyager. A voyage is long, uncharted, and uncertain. After almost twelve years of  marriage I were headed into something unfamiliar.

As the girls got older we outgrew the need for a mini-van, so I traded in the Voyager for a Focus. As I tried to make the best life I could for my children. Three or so years into being a single mother demanded that I shift my focus away from the privilege my married life had afforded me.

Life collapsed when after seven years of joint custody my ex-husband sued for, and won sole custody of our children. My next car was an Element. No longer an active mother, I searched for my place in the world. I was untethered, and aimless, and hopeless. Not in my element. Not belonging anywhere or with anyone.

The Element is a box on wheels. Nothing curvilinear about the design, all straight lines. And that is the car I still drive. I’ve stayed within a very narrow scope since losing my girls. Not wanting to stray outside the lines for fear of being judged. But I am inherently iconoclastic. In car-speak, I’m more aerodynamic than stationary. More comfortable driving a car that goes from 0-60 in a matter of seconds.  More comfortable in a car identified with a series of numbers and letters than one with a self-seeking name.

My husband gave me so many many things, and just as easily took them all away. So the next car I strive to own will be sleek, fast, and foreign. A perfect name could be Pathfinder, Intrepid, or Rogue. But that would be in name only. My next car will be identified by a simple graphic insignia with a series of numbers and letters only, and paid for by me.

Read “Just in Case” to learn more about my daughters and me. http://rawcandor.wpengine.com/?p=1191

I will be reading Raw at the opening and the closing of reVision: See and Shift

Opening: May 19 7-10PM

Closing: June 9 7-9PM