My fifteen year old finished her driver’s training course this week, meaning she can now get her learner’s permit.
Therefore, unless I finally careen off some cliff because one of them refused to listen to my instructions like I always fear will happen,
I will very soon have not one, but two teenage drivers.
This felt like a bad week to be thinking about another soon-coming one of those, as in the middle of last week, I got a call no parent likes to get from my 17 year old, Chloe, that she needed help because the entire front passenger wheel of her car had fallen clean off while she was driving.
I pulled up to rescue her to find her doing the modern day version of a teenager trying to help solve a problem: Sitting in her own back seat, zoned out on Tik Tok.
Chloe being out her car while it was being repaired meant we had to kind-of scramble.
Her school is far, and me trying to juggle having to take her and her two sisters to where they need to be on time would be pretty impossible.
Not knowing what to do, I did the one thing I could think of, and I called my father.
I knew he had four cars, two bikes, and even a dog sled, should I need one.
(There is a reason he’s been called Fred Sanford)
I asked him if he could spare a car for the week until we could get my daughter’s car fixed, and he was quickly agreeable, which always kind of scares me, because I know what I could be in for.
He right away made some comment about how he bet we could just saddle up our steer, Nash, if Chloe was actually that desperate.
He loves nothing more than a good twinkly-eyed comment.
He told me the only car he had available, though, right now was his old work truck that had recently had the entire back end catch on fire while he was driving.
It was no surprise to hear that he had actually kept driving it, while on fire, until he reached his destination.
Perhaps our people shouldn’t own cars at all.
Perhaps a saddled steer IS the real answer…
“Never fear,” he kept talking.
“It has been checked out and is back to being drivable.
Just…don’t look too closely at it.”
He dropped off the key the next morning, and gave me instructions on where to find it,
and then, just like that, as he is a man of mystery,
he disappeared into the distance.
In the past couple of years my dad has rescued us on several car-emergency occasions.
That is the benefit of being the type of person that owns several modes of transportation, though they may be questionable in their functionality:
You always have one that at least looks available.
As silly as it may seem, though, him coming to the rescue in the form of a vehicle has reached a part of me that has ached since I, too, was a teenager, newly driving.
When I was just about to get my license, the first car my dad showed me that he was thinking of purchasing for me was an old retired police sedan that was still black and white, but sadly missing what could have had some potential – a siren.
I was mortified at this suggestion.
I told him, pleading, that there was no way I could roll up at HIGH SCHOOL driving a cop car. “Please no. I beg you.”
I could just see it appearing somehow in the yearbook.
Unfortunately, his answer to my resistance to his first offer was to just have me drive his old Cookie Monster blue F250, onto the back of which he had welded a giant metal frame, which he called “The Cow Cage.”
We didn’t even own a cow at that point.
I think it was kind of an “If you build it, they will come” moment for him.
Imagine the street cred I received barrelling over speed bumps into the student parking lot in that thing as it rattled.
(That amount being absolutely zero)
Worse than this would be that, as I was driving on my first date with a boy I desperately liked from 4th period typing class, because of its size and unmanageability for a 16 year old gir with small handsl, I would, for my first act, then drive that giant blue truck directly into a culvert on our street, completely knocking out my right front tooth, and bashing that boy’s head into the windshield, shattering it.
That date lasted about 15 seconds.
Unfortunately, my parents would be hours away from home when this whole scene happened,
and they would return to the aftermath of a now battered truck, and a daughter with an even more badly battered face, as well as a terribly bruised ego, crushed, and wondering what that boy from typing must think of her.
I can remember that my face was so puffy from sobbing I could hardly open my eyes when my parents returned home, and I will never forget how the state of his truck was the very first thing my dad asked about.
Rather than comfort me, he made it clear he was angry.
Sometimes dads can be gruff, and unbending when young girls needed softness.
I lay on the couch feeling like he maybe did not even love me.
For weeks I would go on to do painful therapy and dental appointments to repair the damage to my mouth from the steering wheel, but what hurt the most was the feeling that my heart was being overlooked.
My dad insisted I get a job, even with my bruised face, to work to pay him back for the cracked windshield.
I learned from that point that there is no greater ache for a teenage daughter than to feel like someone looks directly at, but sees right through them.
The feeling of being less important than a material thing in that one moment would go on to help shape the entire way that I would parent.
I vowed in my heart to put a lot of time into nurturing my childrens’ emotions.
Over the last several years, my dad and I have worked on gaining more closeness in our relationship.
There have been things he’s said in a well-timed text message that have felt like they reached clear back to me climbing out of that wreckage, and were delivered to that version of me.
As he has aged, he has quietly softened,
and healing has come about between us in so many ways that have been unexpected.
When my mom dropped me off with the key in my hand to pick up this newest truck he had offered this week, I climbed inside, started it up, and just sat for a moment, smiling at the familiar sound of a diesel truck’s knocking.
“I’m back at it again, Old Blue.”
Back where I came from.
I sat there looking around at the things and sights still unchanged from my childhood:
Ranch dust on the dashboard, maps and hunting gear in the floorboard, several travel mugs still bearing just a sip worth of cold coffee.
Then I smiled, thinking about a life-journey with a man in a dirty pair of overalls,
and I thought about all that is also different.
I drove that truck to my home that sits on that very same lane I grew up on, and I felt a tug in my heart as I passed the same old culvert that has been covered by a metal grate since my accident happened: A visual representation of deep holes and their patching.
I thought about how often healing comes looking, at first, similar to the thing that hurt you.
Sometimes that’s the best way you will recognize it.
Gentle words soothing places where harsh ones causted damage,
A new friend teaching you that not everyone is against you,
A sweet little puppy loving it’s way into your heart to make up for one in your past that once bit you.
I needed something this last week, and I was so worried about what we’d do, and the outcome,
But then my dad came in and saved me by offering an old beat up truck as the answer.
I felt free in that truck seat that day of a lifetime of hurting.
What once felt like pain,
now was the rescue.
One thing I love about myself is that I pick up on life lessons.
A full-circle moment with diesel valves knocking.
I see now that he just made a mistake back then in frustration, but, I was wrong then, and he has always loved me.
I hope my children see me learning what to hold on to, and what to let go of.
He has loved me in the way he knows how,
and that way is by doing, and giving.
Words and emotions have not always been his top gifting, but he provided safety and stability for me.
There is so much love in that.
It just took another old, beat-up truck to help me see it.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
