Driving My Daughter Everywhere

My life in the car.

—

This is the last day of my 40% off sale. Subscriptions are $30/yr. If you find my writing valuable or entertaining, please consider paying me for it? Please?

—

My daughter just got a lead role in her first ever professional theater production. She is getting paid and everything. We are obviously enormously excited and proud and generally thrilled. Everyone will get to see why we think she is awesome. They will even applaud! What could be better?

There’s only one problem. The theater in question is in the Chicago suburbs, 35 minutes from where we live in light traffic, and god knows how far away in rush hour. She’s going to have practice every night for more than a month. I look into the future, and what I see is my life slipping away and being crushed into the asphalt, hour by hour, on the cruel blacktop of I-94. That ribbon of highway stretches out before me into a bleak pit of boredom and yelling curses at other drivers.

Before we had children, I vowed to my wife that I’d be the one to cart them everywhere—or so she tells me. I have no memory that there was a formal agreement. I have no paperwork. But I’m sure she’s right, and, in any case, I’ve followed through, and it’s been my job in the marriage to schlep the girl to kiddie music lesson, preschool, middle school, high school, and now a whole lot of theater.

I thought that this year, when she turned 16, would be the one where she got her license and started doing more of these journeys sans boring and slightly-humiliating-when-other-kids-are-in-the-car Dad. But unfortunately, I had not counted on the city of Chicago’s hyper road vigilance. They’ve put in place a series of regulations and hoops which make it basically impossible for anyone to get a license until they’re 17 at earliest. You’ve got to take classes, state road tests, more classes, and get the kind of ID documentation you’d think would only usually be necessary for a job collecting national secrets or getting on an airplane. Most of my daughter’s friends don’t even try for a license till they’re 18. Which means that not only does my daughter have no license, but no peers are able to give her a ride either.

And so just when I thought this burden would be lifted from me, I am instead spending even more time than ever before on the road. My life is now a series of painful decisions: do I drive an hour roundtrip once, and then do work in the car or at a café for three hours while rehearsal grinds on? Or do I drive an hour roundtrip to come back home, and then do another hour roundtrip so I can be at home with the cats and the dog and occasionally the wife? Driving through city traffic really sucks, so I mostly end up just doing work or reading in the city somewhere I don’t want to be—which also sucks.

Thus, my life is to me a misery and a woe, and why did we decide to have a child anyway?

To be fair, though, what would I be doing with my time if I wasn’t dedicating it to getting her from point a to point b? I work, I eat, I sleep, people yell at me on social media. I’m not bringing about world peace in my free time. Pretty soon, my daughter won’t need me to convey her good looks (courtesy of mom) and her acting skills (courtesy of who knows?) from my front porch to the stages of Chicago.

In the meantime, the city has decreed that I shall remain useful, and that my daughter has to talk to me at least a little as we lurch forward in start and stop traffic towards her spotlight. That’s not so bad. It’s just time, it’s just my life. I’m happy enough to give her that and more, while I can.

—

This first ran on Splice Today some years back. My daughter now, as anticipated, can drive and doesn’t need me to schlep her anywhere. It is a mixed blessing.