Road Trip

My daughter, Clementine, got her driver’s license late last year, which means that she has been driving on her own for about four months now. Which also means that it was about time to teach her how to drive to Phoenix.

Although this is something I certainly wasn’t looking forward to, it was also something that was very necessary: it is impossible to live in Flagstaff without ever needing or wanting to drive down to Phoenix. Whether to pick someone up at the airport, worship at the pale blonde wooden alter of Ikea, or just experience what it’s like to live with the absolute certainty that you will not need your coat for a few hours, Phoenix trips are inevitable. And because they are so inevitable, and because kids who grow up in Flagstaff make the trip so frequently that they start to recognize the very trees (who among you does not have a family “pee bush”?), there tends to be a blurring of the fact that the road to Phoenix is really, actually, pretty scary.

Many of us who have made this drive for years have had that reinforced for us the hard way, whether through personal experience or through the experiences of someone close to us. Luckily for me, the closest I have ever come to personal tragedy on that road was following along behind someone who had a tire blow out on a curve, and watching in disbelief as their truck rolled over and over dozens of times before impacting a rock wall so hard a washing machine-sized boulder was knocked loose. So even though I know that the need to learn to drive that road correctly is very real, I also knew that it was something I was dreading teaching. Which is why I made my husband do it.

To be fair, he was the one that wanted to do it anyway. But as I crouched down in the backseat, closing my eyes as we passed big trucks at highway speed, I wondered yet again how people do it who don’t have anyone to pass off the more unpleasant bits to. And there are always unpleasant bits. (I’m sure my husband felt the same way later, when after our safe arrival in Phoenix Clementine wanted to celebrate by going to a cosmetics boutique that was larger than most auto parts stores. I bit the bullet on that one, and got to be the one who watched her spend what seemed like two hours debating over the perfect mascara. (“Um—the black one?” I said, unhelpfully, when she asked for my help. “They’re both black,” she said. “Sorry,” I replied. “That’s the limit of my mascara expertise.”) Of course, when we checked out, my expertise at paying the bill came in much handier.

We all have our little skills, I guess. Like my husband’s skill at being the front seat passenger in a car that, to me, seemed to be hurtling us toward our doom for the entire two and a half hour trip.

“You might want to back off a little bit,” he would say, remarkably calmly, I thought, as we attempted to drive up into the bed of the truck in front of us. And, later, “You might want to get back on the road for a while. That rumbling sound means that your tires are off the road.” (Only later would I notice the indentations of his fingernails in the seat.)

Because he managed to stay calm though, Clementine also managed to stay calm while he was giving her these little nudges, which was good—calm is always good at 75 miles an hour. If only I could have managed the same. Still, I don’t think my little whimpers were too noticeable from the back seat. And besides—isn’t that what the radio is for?

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