I have a driver. It’s an unfortunate midlife development, born of necessity and luckily available in the form of my retired husband, who loves to drive. Today, he is driving me to acupuncture, where I will ask why I can’t drive. It’s an absurd situation and I have not accepted it with grace. Midlife has taken my keys and relegated me to the passenger seat — it’s humiliating. Put it on the list of things that midlife has stolen from me — confidence, sleep, good hair, a functioning thyroid.
For most of my life, I loved driving. I loved the power and independence, the freedom and sense of competence. I took driving for granted, a right bestowed on all middle class, mid-century children in a car-mad culture. When I was young, I drove too fast and too much. I grew up in Maryland, a state with the bad judgement to give me a permit when I was 15 years and 9 months old, and a license on my 16th birthday. In one of my early performances, I hit a parked car in the High’s parking lot. I drove away, mortified, and never looked back.
My trusting mother lent me her racy burgundy Camaro when I was 17, so that I could chase the Grateful Dead (okay maybe a boy) a state south with other dopey deadheads. I’m ashamed of the Dead part and the boy was an idiot (of course he was), but I loved driving that ridiculously cool car.
Mom gave me my first car, a used blue Toyota Celica with a long stick shift on the floor. It wasn’t long before the only way to start the thing was to park on hills so that I could roll it and pop the clutch. But it was so cute and zippy that, faults aside, I loved it. It got me mostly through college, though I had to park in the dangerous distant campus lots with the hills and the rape phones.
I’ve driven in all weather, at all hours, through all traffic conditions. Highway, city, country, bridges, tunnels — I’ve done it all. Most of my cars have been four-on-the-floor, though the current chariot is automatic (easier on the complaining left knee, another midlife casualty). I’ve driven big cars and little cars, trucks and dirt bikes. I even drove an oversize van for a catering company. I was a happy, confident, competent driver for a very long time, aware always of the romance of the road.
After decades of four-wheeled freedom — chasing boys and bands, jockeying daily around the DC beltway, ferrying four kids across the universe forever — I am now a nervous and reluctant driver. The spin cycle of peri/menopause spit me out rattled, with the neat gifts of panic and poor night vision, both unwelcome burdens behind the wheel. I’m fine with the short, daylight jaunts in my tiny, rural village, but windows-down, music-up highway driving is a white knuckle situation. Town driving is a shrill panic at every intersection, a butterfly stomach at the hint of traffic.
A dizzy spell at home sends me to the couch, like a silent movie star, to dissect the depressing fact of my fallibility. But a hint of dizzy at a red light can send me into full-fledged panic, a mad rant of what-ifs chattering inside my odd, busy brain. Perhaps this should be added to the 34 symptoms of menopause.
#35: Sudden inability to drive a fucking car, you incompetent loser.
I’m not taking it well.
My auto trouble began in a white 1993 Volvo 240 wagon. I loved that car and it served me well for years, but shit got weird in my mid-forties. I remember traveling from here to who-knows-where, in the throes of a full and fearsome panic. It was the age of my unraveling, when I had forgotten how to be here, how to breathe and stay on two feet. I was a mess, every day, and not a hot one. A tepid mess, dragging through the hours, grasping at split ends.
Traffic was standstill, cars idling all around me on a tiny city bridge, a familiar situation I had managed many times without incident. But these were the days of incident and, as I clutched the wheel hard and felt the panic monster roar and rise within, I knew. It was big and I would lose. I would die, here on this bridge, in this car. It would be ugly, the jaws of my undoing voracious and at my throat.
I didn’t die, but it didn’t end. The panic path was mowed neatly through my brain and the car takes me right back to it.
The madwoman in the Volvo, indeed.
We bought a new car a few years ago, a cute little red thing (not a Volvo). I drove myself to town with the promise of a bookshop at the other end (the perfect carrot for a nerd). I made it, after a nervous 30 minutes, and was so proud of myself that I took a picture of the new red car parked in front of the shop. In the moment, it was a triumph, and I bought a few books to reward myself. Later, though, when I made it home and looked at my phone, I saw the incongruous image of a normal car parked on an average street in a smallish town. My heart sank. This is what I am now? A timid, boring middle-aged woman who considers a short trip to the bookshop Insta worthy. How far the mighty have fallen.
I once read a profile of a famous author, a brilliant figure on the international literary scene whose work takes my breath away. It mentioned that her quiet backstage husband is also her agent. He does her scheduling, reservations, and appointments — and all of the driving. There wasn’t a whiff of apology from her about this fact — she did the writing, he did the driving (and the rest). A logical and symbiotic relationship. Oh to have her confidence (and her career, which honestly is probably the source of the confidence).
Midlife finds so many ways to diminish us, to challenge the sense we have of ourselves. It messes with our vision and our hearing, it knocks us down and keeps us up all night. It makes us dizzy and angry and scared and causes us to question everything from our hair to our sanity. Nothing is sacred, it’s death by a thousand cuts.
I think if I could just have this one thing — the old confidence to ferry myself anywhere I’d like, anytime, in my little red car — I would be happy. My husband is gracious and accommodating, but the loss of my wheeled independence has been one of the deepest cuts. I’m hoping to get back in the saddle, hoping that practice will tamp the fear and return me, somewhat, to my freewheeling self. But, for now, I have a driver. I’m trying to find the grace to lean into it.
Otherwise, maybe it’s time for a city chapter.
Happy trails! 🚗
Lisa
Things to share
I went to the farm in a heat wave with a cold, stood in the long rows of bursting cherry tomatoes stomping my feet like a bugged pony, and picked boxes of sweet little gems. I’ll make this when things cool off a bit. I’m a goddamned unsung hero.
I’m reading Pineapple Street and enjoying it quite a lot. It’s the perfect summer cocktail, but also sneaky smart.
The whole family came home for a week and we did this:
Nothing else to share. Goodbye summer. Sigh.
"Midlife finds so many ways to diminish us, to challenge the sense we have of ourselves. It messes with our vision and our hearing, it knocks us down and keeps us up all night. It makes us dizzy and angry and scared and causes us to question everything from our hair to our sanity. Nothing is sacred, it’s death by a thousand cuts."
I am really feeling this shit. Plus I go through moments of "anything is possible/I can re-invent myself!" for like a sec & then 'why bother'. Also apparently I now track how I feel by the weather outside. I keep complaining about the humidity & I'm dripping sweat like I have the plague and my husband likes to tell me it's not humid, quotes the actual dew point & says it's me.
Hi Lisa, I share your love for driving and have driven all over the place, in all sorts of vehicles (we had a Renault LeCar that my step-father bought in a pawn shop, which we had to pop the clutch on), in all manner of weathers. Thank you for reminding me about Toyota Celica's and four on the floors. While anxiety (and sometimes panic) have been my companions for as long as I can remember, they have not manifest in the car until recently. Oddly, this doesn't happen when I'm driving - it happens when my husband is driving. My husband has always driven like an 80 year old man, which makes me crazy, but now it makes me anxious too. It's gotten so bad that most of the time I just drive so that we don't get in a fight because I'm busy making comments and telling him where to turn, to speed up, and asking, "why are you doing that?"
I wish you well in your return to the road and wheel!