Vroom Vroom

I was in a car accident when I was eleven years old. We had just watched Disney on Ice, and I had tried bubble tea for the first time. It was freezing that day- sometime in January. It was a weekend. It was snowing. I was pretending to sleep because I thought that was how to really fall asleep. We were going home. I was so excited to go home- I hated the cold. I still do. I couldn’t wait to get home, where our fireplace was waiting, and my grandparents were waiting, and warm food was waiting.

I remember being very disoriented. I heard music playing softly on the stereo, and my parents were speaking in hushed tones. It was often like that when we drove home at night- they’d put on music, and my dad would drive and my mom would talk to him and they’d both stay awake. Today, the roads were icy.

So icy, in fact, that my father lost control of the car, and it crashed against one already pulled over by the cliff face above. Everyone survived, but my family felt it for years afterward. My father hated bubble tea for the next four years because he associated it with the crash. He and my mother argued about the accident very often. It left a strain on all of us.

Intriguingly enough, I forgot about it relatively quickly.

From a young age, I’d loved driving. I’d squeal gleefully as a toddler, getting to ride in my father’s lap and hold the steering wheel as he drove slowly around the gated community we lived in when I was small. When we moved to upstate New York, where there were no sidewalks and I could count the number of crosswalks in our town on one hand, I craved driving. I counted down the days until I could get my permit, then my license, so I could drive to the library or to the mall in the neighboring town.

Nevertheless, for a decade, my days consisted of riding the crowded school bus to and from school, and then being trapped at home for the rest of the day. I couldn’t study at home- I got distracted too easily, but my parents both worked full-time and couldn’t drive me to cafes to study. My evenings were spent dreaming of night drives and the wind against my face.

I loved to stand up and watch the world from the open sunroof of our family minivan in middle school as my mom drove up our cul-de-sac on the way back from my tutoring club and honor society meetings. I felt like a princess with the cold rushing towards me as we traversed our dead end of a street. Then I’d step out of the car, my cheeks turning numb, and step into my tower. No one really intended my home to be the gilded cage that it was, but I felt detained in every moment, imprisoned in the minutes and seconds I spent in my own thoughts.

Even now, going home brings me back to that. My world becomes the four walls again, and my heart is once again a bird beating its wings against the cage bars. But now, I know the world is bigger.

The August before my senior year of high school, I finally learned to drive. I wasn’t good at the time, not by any means, but I was free. I was free to form and maintain friendships outside of school, and I was free to find my third places and my brightest moments away from the light of my window. I could feel the rush of driving long distances with my own music, at my own pace, and with my own company. There was a whole world to explore, and it was my oyster.

I cried myself to sleep on the eve of my 17^th birthday. My mother had left to go on a trip, but she wouldn’t be there for my last birthday home. But more than that, I was scared. I was terrified. I was terrified because my driver’s test was in two days. I hadn’t been able to drive in weeks, and I was so worried that I’d fail. I was worried that I’d wasted my parents’ money on lessons and the testing fee. I was worried that I’d never learn. I was worried that I’d end up like my friends who couldn’t drive- stuck and sedentary. Driving, to me, was synonymous with autonomy. I didn’t want to be at the whims of others who could drive to let me out of my cage, and I didn’t want my siblings to be as trapped as I was. But, even so, I knew I couldn’t parallel park. I knew I could hardly do a 3-point turn. I knew the place I was taking the test was a zone with a slower speed limit than I was used to, and I was having difficulty staying below that as it was.

I overstated. I passed the driver’s test with flying colors. I was overjoyed.

Now, I’m a student in college. I couldn’t bring my car, tragically. It was an adorable blue 2015 Mini Cooper and had belonged to my father. He gave it to me when I learned to drive after teaching me on it. When I first visited my university, I bought a license plate frame for it. It carried my sister and I on all of our greatest adventures, and my friends and I on all of our hardest goodbyes. I learned about the merits of bicycles, buses, and trains here. While all have their benefits, of course, especially environmentally, none of them can compare emotionally to driving.

Driving is my freedom, and it’s my release. It’s my first urge when I’m stressed, and it’s my favorite hobby. I take pride in my driving and my car, and I take great care to make the experience in it good for my friends and family. I’m able to help my family with errands and after-school activities, which was wonderful for us when my mother was diagnosed with cancer and out of commission for months. Driving gave me the tools to free myself and learn how to explore, and it gave me the power to help my family, and I can never overstate what it means to me.