I remember trying to learn how to drive stick shift for the first time. I LOVE driving manual cars and it’s pretty much a must-have for me in a car. Little Bette is super zippy and I love zooming around in that car. It wasn’t always the case though. Pretty much anyone who has ever learned how to drive stick prefers it… but every single one of them most likely hated it at first, especially depending on what kind of car they were learning on.
I was trying to learn how to drive stick in an ’85 Dodge Colt and it wasn’t going very smoothly. At the pinnacle of frustration I was in the car with my dad, trying to parallel park and wasn’t succeeding. I was angry and my dad was angry and the next thing you know, I let go of the clutch too quickly and it lurched backwards into the stairway railing, breaking the tail light. Angry words ensued.
After I ran into the house, I stomped up to my room and yelled down the stairs, “I’m never driving with you AGAIN!”
My dad slammed the front door and yelled, “I’m never driving with YOU again!”
And that was that.
Things didn’t go much better with my mom teaching me, however it was a totally different scenario. Every single time I’d have to stop and then go again, the car would start bucking uncontrollably and we would laugh uncontrollably until it inevitably stalled. People would be honking behind me and we laughed till we cried, bucking at the stop sign endlessly. Needless to say, I didn’t keep that car. I took the money I saved all summer working and the Dodge Colt into a dealership to trade “up” for the giant boat of a car that was my Oldsmobile.
After I wrecked that car (that’s a whole other story, ha) I was forced to learn how to drive a stick because that was the only option. My wonderful love affair with manual cars started with little Suzie Suburu. This time I was given the keys and told to “go figure it out.” And that’s how I learned. Getting in and doing it over and over again until I was zipping around York County like a stick-driving champ!
For the last year and a half I’ve felt like I am trying to drive on I-83 in 1st gear. My brain just won’t snap to it. It just won’t get out of first gear and I’m bucking down the road and it just won’t shift up to the next gear and I stall out and have to to restart the car again. I’m pretty sure mom brain looks like a mentally ill brain. I’m just puttering along, trying to keep from stalling and getting hit, watching everyone whiz by. People are honking at me and telling me to get moving and I am trying but I just can’t get seem to shift into 2nd gear.
I know it’s just a phase and that it will pass. Soon I’ll be flying up the road, begging for life to slow down as I watch my little boy grow into a man. Raising him is simultaneously life sucking and life giving, the biggest paradox I’ve ever experienced.
Each day is a triumph. I’ve never lived so day to day in my life and there is beauty in that… but it is hard for an adrenaline junkie. So much routine. So much tediousness. So hard to fight the desire to escape into something but I refuse to do so, regardless of the temptations. Living out what is right in front of me, instead of rehashing the past or thinking fifty steps ahead, is the hardest discipline I have ever learned. It’s being in 1st gear on the highway and trying not to panic. So, here I am taking it one day at a time, still learning the beauty of taking it slow and appreciating the daily small gifts that life brings. (yeah, that’s a deliciously cheesy closer and I like it)
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