Hard skills: driving

Dad taught me to drive. My experience with driver's education wasn't a particularly good one. My instructor was more interested in his Mountain Dew in cigarettes, and I had to drive with a car load of bullies and other kids from school who didn't like me and would do things like flick my ear and kick the seat, all while the instructor chugged his green pop and chain smoke Basics.

So when it was obvious that I needed more practice before the driving test, he took me out in his 1989 Chevy S-10 Blazer. This was no small thing. He special ordered it from a dealership in Indiana. I remember the day we drove to trade in his truck and pick it up because I remember the cicadas. Walls of fat insects flying hurling themselves against the giant plate glass windows, flying and hurling and either falling dead or bouncing until they fell dead:

on the ground
in a rotten ankle tall pile
of failed cicadas.

 And then one of them flew into the Blazer and hid under my seat. The sound it made sounded like it as waiting to devour my kicks.

Dad loved to drive and I think he wanted to be able to share that with me. Because he was sick most of my childhood, there were a lot "father/son" kinds of things we simply weren't able to do.  But I WAS worried, because even though my driving instructor was a bully ignoring, Mountain Dew chugging, chain smoking USE LESS instructor, I did manage to scare him at least twice to the point that he nearly choked on his Pepsi product. And my Dad wasn't exactly KNOWN for his calm nature.

But he talked me out of the driveway and away. He took me down back roads near the house; very little traffic, but narrow and windy in places. And he talked to me about why he liked to drive. It was a chance to let his mind go, he said. He could focus on driving and not have to think about anything, or he could think about things, decompress, or just listen to the radio. Dad was the only adult who had told me it was OK to listen to the radio while you drive.

He never used the word meditation. But that's what it was about for him. A meditation. And yes, I'm sure he also felt those feelings of independence I used to feel when I drove. But he didn't attach driving to his freedom, his masculinity, or his economic status. He drove because he loved to drive.

I don't know how he'd feel knowing that I don't especially like to drive. But I do like to be in motion. This sometimes takes the form of travel. A lot of times it just takes the form of walking. I like to walk and meditate, or walk and think, or walk and listen to music. I like to walk and take in the world in small, deep draughts.

I like to think he'd understand.

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Porkopolis Outbound: East By West Slingshot

Drink wine, my darling, and stop chattering. - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

If you don't like my peaches

Don't you shake my tree.  -- Sitting on Top of the World, Doc Watson

Morning will come early in suburbia. Mi Madre and I  are loading up and heading east on Ohio State  Route 32, winding through Eastern Ohio to the West Virginia border. Somewhere around Charleston, we'll pick up I-64, which will take us all most of the way through Virginia and back to Norfolk... still top of my list as the single most unpleasant, unfriendly and curse-ed place I have ever been to.

The sheer shittiness of Norfolk is salvaged by the presence my one and only lovely daughter, Stella.

Not my old car. This actually looks much nicer.

Add to that the fact that we won't be staying IN Norfolk proper. Rather, we'll be staying at Virginia Beach... a place I have positive memories of. The last time I was in Virginia beach was the summer of 2001, when I spent a month or so camping around Chesapeake Bay and visiting the kid.

I drove there in my primer orange Subaru. It leaked oil and almost overheated driving through West Virginia. The two back quarter panels were in the process of rusting off. The exhaust pope and muffler were gone and it sounded like a tank. There was no radio. The back two doors were fused shut and one of the back windows was permanently rolled down. The heat didn't work unless I kicked the blower motor, and sometimes I had to hit the alternator with a hammer in order to get it to start. I loved that car. I loved camping along the south side of Chesapeake Bay. I loved that Stella got to camp with me on the weekends and that I got to see her most everyday when I was there.

This trip will be nice because the kid's on Spring Break, and will actually have time to hang out. The only real downer about this trip is that I will, once again, not be able to meet The Boyfriend. This, I must admit, I'm really quite disappointed about. Because although I am the genitor and pater primo, I don't get to meet the boyfriends.... since I am the non-parentis pater, she doesn't live with me and hasn't since her mother and I split up. This means I don't get to meet (scare) the boyfriends -- which, as far as I'm concerned, is a parental right.

Unless, of course, we extend out stay there by a day... and then... and then... maybe... I might get to meet some kid who I know, without even meeting, isn't anywhere near good enough.

Hey... at least I'm honest about it.



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