LICENCE TO DRIVE

Do you remember your first time behind the wheel?

I failed my driver’s test twice. Each time I went, I shook with nerves as I watched the examiner shift his big body into the passenger seat. I wasn’t worried about being a bad driver (although, let’s be honest, I was); rather, I was a wreck because I’d never wanted anything so badly. Magnified through the hyperbolic lens of adolescence, it seemed like my freedom—my life—hung in the balance. And so I choked. Twice.

When I finally passed the test, the feeling was more intoxicating than I’d imagined. I was suddenly behind the wheel of my own destiny. I’d pick up my best friend in my parents’ car and we’d just drive. One day, we pooled our money for gas and drove from Montreal to Ottawa because a friend said a diner there had the best chicken fingers. As we slid out of the booth, brushing away the last crumbs of our lunch and our childhood, we asked ourselves the only question that mattered over the next few years: “Where to next?”

My mom just smiled when we got home. In retrospect, I’m sure she saw the mileage on the car soaring. Regardless, she would hand me the keys over and over again. Now I’m a mother myself, and I know that my five-year-old daughter already feels the same pull of the road. She yells at me to open the window so she can feel the wind on her face from the back seat. “Turn this song up!” she shouts. I can see her future in those moments, unfurling in front of us like the open highway. I just hope that wherever she goes, her trips eventually take her back home to me. KATE SOMERVILLE