Drive.

I hardly ever remember dreams anymore. Sometimes little snippets, but never the full-story, start to finish sort of remembering. So when I started waking up in the middle of the night from medium-bits of nightmares, I knew it was something to be noted.

For your reading comfort, I will preface this by saying that we are all okay. Everyone who may come up in this little venture is completely fine, heading back to normal, and this writing serves as a small way of putting it behind us.

I’m learning that whenever I’m really struggling, I tend to turn to the comfort-joys of my past - a complete retreat to a former version of myself. Sometimes it’s things that I have completely forgotten were joys. Sometimes they’re simple, like listening to an 80s song I’d forgotten I loved, or watching a favorite episode from a favorite show. A peanut-butter-jelly-potato-chip sandwich. Other times, I unlock a vault of a great idea that, to my surprise, folds perfectly into present day.

My dad loved cars - mostly classic cars. He had a 1957 Ford Fairlane. It was black with a gold flame-like stripe that arched hopefully upward toward the back and subtle angles in its window panes and grills. The word “Fairlane” was written in half-cursive, half-print chrome - perhaps my favorite detail, similar to my own handwriting style today. I don’t know the details of why he had this particular car or how he acquired it. Was it coincidental or planned for a long time - a young adult’s dream car? Was it new or used when he got it? But I sensed as a kid that he loved it and that it was special for him to drive it.

I remember the mundane trips around town for groceries, errands, visits with family. The leather bench seats. But I especially remember the car shows at Olde Salem Days and the Salem Christmas Parade every year.

Held annually in September, Olde Salem Days was a downtown street event, sprawling for about a mile down Main Street, with booths for artisan crafts, jewelry, food, local sports and business promotion, charitable non-profits, and a stage or two for local music. Down one side street, there was a classic car show. My dad occasionally entered the polished up Fairlane in the show, standing around it engaged in car-talk with passers-by and neighboring enthusiasts. I wonder now how much he actually spoke to others - he was extremely quiet. Maybe if someone asked the right line of questions or offered a specific compliment about the car, he’d have a lot to say. Maybe he had car friends we didn’t know about and this was a joyous celebration of a hobby. It was hard to tell, other than his polishing the leather interior for the occasion.

My mom and I would shop the main street, walking the almost-mile from our corner house to downtown where the event started. We’d joke about swinging by the car show to drop off our bags of treasures in the trunk. I think my mom was just as curious as I to spy a bit on this mysterious car-guy. We’d round the corner and see him standing with hands in pockets, a closed-lip polite smile, weight shifted slightly on one leather ankle boot as was his style then. Sometimes I’d sit in the back to get a break from the sun. I wish I’d paid closer attention to the details of this other life of my dad, but I was probably wanting to get back to shopping with my mom.

Sadly, this event was cancelled this year.

The Christmas parade was the most fun. Dad would drive the Fairlane in the parade and I was the waver out the window. It had a programmable horn - you could punch any number up to 100 and the horn would play part of a specific song. The wrinkled piece of paper with the numbered song list was clipped to the visor and the keypad looked sorta like an oversized garage door opener. You had to really mash the buttons, but not too fast, and you eventually learned that some numbers just didn’t work. But during the Christmas parade, we’d cycle through the holiday songs. Snippets of “Jingle Bells”, “Frosty the Snowman”, and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” would signal our turn past the Friday night small town crowds. Dad was in charge of the driving, and I was in charge of the music.

He eventually sold that car. I don’t remember why. There were other cars after that - most, if not all of them Fords. But none were as nice and as fun as the Fairlane and its musical horn.

Best guess: mid-1970s

My mom also has a fondness for cars. Before I was around, she had a sporty Barracuda. Then there was the Pontiac phase - the Pontiac Grand Prix, which I remember being the first car with a sunroof and electric windows - both of which seemed so luxurious for the time. Then, the Pontiac Grand Am - the car I coveted until at long last I was given it during college, only to then total it in a bad accident on I-81 less than 6 months after getting it. Mom moved me to JMU partially in an Acura Integra hatchback; you coudn’t see a thing in the rear-view window for the stuff. All of these cars were black, as are both hers and my car today. Mom has always taken great care with her cars, keeping up with maintenance and paint jobs and cleaning. Sometimes I poke fun at this, and sometimes she pokes fun at how opposite I can be at times regarding keeping things “like new”.

I hear about some teens today who don’t like driving - even delaying getting their license either because they don’t need it or don’t want it. I cannot relate to this at all. It never occurred to me to not need a drivers license. And, I most certainly wanted it the first minute it was available to me. I’ve always loved driving. It’s largely the reason I think I’ll eventually try driving the mail truck. I love driving and one day I’m gonna want to interact daily with less people than I do teaching public school. But more because of the driving.

In my mid-twenties, I was working a full-time job plus two part-time jobs, plus attending grad school in the evenings. I had very little time to myself, except that one of my jobs was teaching piano lessons in students’ homes - and this required some northern Virginia driving. Another job was hiring independent music teachers to teach private lessons in the DC metro area for the music company I co-founded. Lots more weekend driving - many times to Maryland and back twice in one day.

Eventually, I decided that the time I was spending in my car was turning out to be valuable. After looking at my finances, I decided I could probably swing something a little nicer than what I was driving at the time - a little bone I decided to throw myself for working all the time.

So, I bought a used Jaguar. It was pretty. It was luxurious. It was so easy to drive. I gave up driving a manual for the luxury, though I did miss it. All the time I spent driving around NoVa was suddenly more fun. The front grill had the classic look, reminding me a little of the Fairlane, or at least the concept of a classic car.

It turns out that Jaguars do live up to their reputation of breaking down, and that was unfortunately true for my experience. After tiring of repair bills, I traded it in for a new but modest, manual, silver Honda Civic coupe. I put the thoughts of luxury, comfort, and focused on the fun of a zippy, get-around car. My current car (Hyundai Elantra GT) also falls under zippy and practical, but also reliable and a little stylish, by my standard. It also has a panoramic sunroof that spans a large portion of the roof, and is a 6-speed manual. I tell myself that these two things make it a little more fun than a responsible, adult car.

Speaking of being responsible, and an adult, sometimes the universe likes to volley. We had a little brush with a Covid-scare. A teacher at Arthur’s preschool tested positive after experiencing (luckily) mild symptoms. We were identified as having been in close contact with the case. We all had to get tested. We all had to quarantine for the next eight days from the scary phone call, which then added up to a total of 14 days since the last contact with the teacher. We would have had to quarantine longer if our test results hadn’t come back in those eight days, which luckily they did. Unfortunately, the 14 days also overlapped with a visit to my mom. Though we took serious caution around her, we had an added layer of worry about whether she’d get sick too. None of us had symptoms, nor developed any, and that one fact is the only reason I could sleep, sort of.

We received this news while already on a weekend trip to Skyland to spend some time in the mountains. Mountains don’t get great internet service. We had a tele-doc appointment for our 4-yr old son and his pediatrician from my cell phone on a balcony - the only place where I could at least occasionally get two bars of signal. We had to strain to hear the important details and instructions for what to do and what to look out for as far as any possible symptoms, through crackly connection. We cut our trip short so we could get back to internet service and figure out how to tackle the next week of quarantine and work with Arthur now being kept home. The timing of this unexpected week home also meant that he missed the very last week with his teachers and classmates and had no closure or chance to say goodbye to any of them. One day I’ll be able to write about Arthur’s first year at preschool and how much we absolutely adored his teachers and that last sentence will retroactively weigh more.

Approximately 36 hours after we got home from the shortened trip, and six hours before our 4-year old would get his nose swabbed in a parking lot from a nice lady dressed in full hazmat-looking PPE (all of which completely terrified him)...our air conditioner broke. Within about five hours from that moment, the temperature in our home increased 14 degrees. For some of you, this would maybe have not been a big deal, but my husband begins involuntarily sweating at 68 degrees unless he is asleep. Our son seems to take after him in that regard. I have developed a learned intolerance to still-heat, though I can hang a few degrees higher than the rest of my gang.

The air-conditioner of course had just passed its warranty expiration. It also of course would cost a little over $2K to fix it. And lastly, of course, the necessary part to fix it would need to be ordered and could take a few days. (It took ten days which is more than a few, for any of you wondering. It’s okay if you were not.)

We moved into a hotel room for three of those ten days, after our house had climbed past 85 degrees in early September humidity and doing anything besides sitting resulted in agony and defeat. I wish I could say that this was a loving, heartwarming, cherished time with my dear family in the hotel, but I cannot. I also cannot recap any of my behavior that would remind you of someone with grace, patience, compassion, or hope.

So, I rented a convertible. I suddenly remembered that I had registered in the app called Turo, which is the AirBnB of renting cars. A friend of mine had told me about it back when I was trying to rent a Ford Mustang convertible as a surprise for Matt’s 40th birthday, but Turo never had that particular car within a 100 mile radius of me, so it never panned out. I was already an approved driver, so all I had to do was filter my search for a convertible to a targeted day, time, price, and location. I scheduled the rental to begin three days after we all got negative Covid-test results, one day after our quarantine would officially be over, two days before virtual school would start, yet four days before our AC would get fixed. I threw the universe some good ol’ fashioned materialism. A splurge in surrender. Take THAT!

You guys, this was seriously the best idea I think I’ve had in my adult life, beyond deciding to get married and start a family and *not* live with them in a hotel room. Borrow somebody else’s nice convertible for a few days. Then give it back.

It was a nice convertible. So nice. Black. Leather seats. Clean. Crisp smell. The top retracts with a click and a hold of a button - faster than it takes my computer to restart. Great sound system. Cool lighting that intuitively turns on and changes for you so you never have to worry about whether your high beams are still on, for one example. So many sensors and optimal driving configurations that know what you want to do before you do. Sirius XM radio. Tight grip on the road and split-second reaction time. The guy I rented it from could not have been nicer. I wanted to be his friend in the first 30 seconds of speaking to him.

I had it for three days. I drove for a total of 13 deliberate hours, plus some errands here and there. I drove past every farm, roadside market, and rolling hill in the northern third of Virginia. Top down. Hair a-blowin. Music cranked. Because I couldn’t figure out how to connect my Bluetooth, I just listened to Sirius XM, scrolling through channels until I heard a song I liked - like we all used to do before the 90s and portable CD players made it into our tape decks. The universe granted two consecutive days of no rain, temperatures in the high 70s/low 80s, and absolutely beautiful blue skies. I felt like a teenager again - the good associations of that - the not-a-care in the world beyond what song might come on next and should I scroll up or down from the perfect, ergonomically situated dial that rested just at my right hand’s fingertips? I remembered a Nelly song that I love in that “I’m paying zero attention to the lyrics but the beat and the sequencing are awesome” kind of way. There is zero chance I would have heard that song without the gift of lackadaisical driving-music time. I stopped and did some outdoor antique-shopping at my favorite store in Lucketts. I ran into a cute shop in downtown Warrenton for preschool teacher gifts. I stopped at a favorite cafe for sweet tea and baked goods. All purchases fit inside the small trunk in the back.

What didn’t fit at all was a child car seat. Or my husband’s 6-ft, 5 inch stature. So they were officially uninvited to this little temporary escape-hatch I had found. A much happier, more relaxed human with wind blown hair joined them for dinner. The nightmares stopped. I think the experience literally cleared my head. I’m definitely gonna do it again, and next time not wait until I’m at the end of my rope to consider it. Maybe you should, too.