A very tiny essay
I’ve signed my fifteen-year-old twins up for driver’s ed.
They start in February—a month of freezing temperatures, ice, and snow.
I’m skittish from a car accident.
I scream easily.
So, my 83-year old father—the man who taught me to drive in a parking lot in a Volkswagon Sciracco with manual transmission—will take my children to practice in a parking lot in the Subaru Forester that carted them through childhood.
The greyed fabric covering the Subaru’s ceiling still bares their footprints, alongside holes from a pencil thrown by one of them when they were small.
Reverse, my father taught me, was the most powerful gear in the snow.
Back, to go forth.
Reverse may be the most powerful gear, but there’s nothing like driving forward.
Really, it’s the only way to go.
L’dor v’dor.