Our local public radio station asks us to share our “driveway moments”, times when we sit in the car listening to the end of an NPR story, reluctant to turn off the radio and go into the house before the piece ends.
I have my own driveway moments but they don’t always involve the car’s radio.
I go about my business all day, mostly solitary, engaging in casual conversation of little depth. Then I drive home, and use the Prius’s Bluetooth to call a friend or my son. If I’m lucky, someone answers. I cruise down Broadway, cut over to Brookside Blvd., head south towards my home, with a voice flooding the confines of my vehicle. For the rest of the evening, only the sound of the television will interrupt the silence, but in the fifteen minutes between work and home, the air vibrates with laughter and stories of someone else’s day.
Yesterday I spent three hours as a volunteer notary in a petition drive. Darkness fell around the storefront while we worked. I left at 8:30, tired, still aching from yesterday’s fall, but feeling useful and needed, something that I crave in the very fiber of my being.
On the way home, I called my son and we talked about the Wisconsin primary returns. He’s studied the candidates over the last few months and made his selection on the strength of everything he read. I know how he attacks an interest: He saturates himself, reading hours and hours of internet articles, watching videos, reading the opinions of thoughtful commentators. I have not seen him this intensely engaged for many years, perhaps not since he first decided to learn the guitar at age nine.
I finished the conversation in the silence of the car, at the end of the driveway, with my little dog hovering by the gate wondering why I didn’t come and let her into the house. I finally suggested that we speak later, or the next day, and we said goodnight. I dragged my computer bag out of the front seat, and steadied myself before beginning the hike to the front door. I could not help but smile. Whatever else might be said of me, I seem to have succeeded in raising a son with every chance of fulfilling his early promise.
It’s the sixth day of the twenty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining. To my friends, to my readers, I can say this: Call me. I’ll sit in my driveway, in the warmth of this early spring, and talk to you. And our connected life will continue.
