A memoir by Gabby Parker

I was very much not looking forward to getting my learner’s permit on my 15th birthday. I never experienced that supposed universal thrill when my fourteen-year-old legs reached for the car’s pedals, driving illegal practice loops at 15 mph through my neighborhood. No matter how hard I tried, I never felt that anxious joy that was supposed to come with growing up, too busy being stuck in the anxious part. None of it was fun, but especially not driving. 

My uncle taught me to drive, as my dad’s chemotherapy and radiation treatments left him exhausted, and the risk of seizures from the brain tumor legally kept him from operating a vehicle, anyways. I practiced in my uncle’s red Toyota Corolla on the weekends, but drove with my mom in my dad’s Hyundai Sonata on weekday evenings. Through all the anxiety, I learned. I still clenched the steering wheel so tightly I would lose feeling in my pinky fingers, but I learned. 

Despite my fears and apprehensions, I went to the DMV after school on my fifteenth birthday. After missing four questions on my computerized test, I was rewarded with a black and white paper copy of my permit with the promise of a plastic one in the mail. The first thing I did after receiving it was happily take my familiar place in the passenger’s seat, allowing my mom to drive me home. I was in no hurry. 

I don’t remember when exactly, but sometime between my fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, my dad had me sit with him at the dining room table. He asked me, if you could have anyone’s car, which would you pick? I thought the question was strange, but after thinking over the possibilities, landed on the conclusion that my uncle must have been getting rid of the old Corolla. It’s part of why I so confidently told him that was my favorite. 

He paused for a moment, looking sad. I couldn’t figure out how I had answered incorrectly. Well, what’s your second favorite? Now it was my turn to pause. Yours, I told him. 

In truth, his car probably was my favorite. I had been obsessed with it since I picked it out at the dealership with him as a kid, enamored with the sunroof and how the silly cloth top the previous owner had put on made everyone think it was a convertible. One night shortly after he bought it, when Dad was driving me home from dinner, he said watch this, rolled all the windows down, and opened the sunroof. My ears popped and he turned the radio all the way up and we sang classic rock songs so loud that we could hear our voices over the music and the wompwompwomp sound from the open windows, and I couldn’t imagine there was anything in the world cooler than that. I even got a trucker to blow his horn, and Dad high-fived me, and we laughed so hard we cried. 

Of course the Sonata was my favorite. 

But then he handed me the keys and said it’s yours now and it didn’t feel like my favorite anymore. Logically, I had known since my dad was diagnosed with Glioblastoma that there was no cure, that he was never getting better. Still, I was a kid, and some part of me hoped that maybe one day he’d drive me down the interstate again with all the windows down, that we would sing so loud that nothing else would matter. 

He handed me the keys and it was so real. He said it’s yours now but what he really meant was I’ll never drive again, and so how could the Sonata be my favorite? 

For years after he died, years after I moved away from my hometown, I held onto that Sonata. Even when I had to roll my windows down to open the driver’s side door from the outside, when that silly cloth top started peeling. I only got rid of it when my mom made me, when the windows stopped rolling down and I had to push the handle in place just right to open my door from the inside. She said it wasn’t safe to drive anymore. 

I have a Ford Escape now. In all logical ways, it’s a better car. Everything works, it’s bigger (small cars always scared me), it even has a backup camera. I can’t find it easily in parking lots though, because everyone has a white SUV, and it doesn’t have a ridiculous cloth top that makes it easy to spot. I haven’t rolled all the windows down to sing on the highway, yet, but maybe if I did I’d like it more. I don’t think so though. Because dad’s not with me, and I stopped listening to classic rock because none of the songs sound right when I’m the only one singing. 

I still hate driving. Mostly because I still hate being alone. When I have to, though, I play my music, different songs now, songs that are all mine. I sing loud enough that I can’t hear the rumble of the road, but I keep all the windows up. 

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Gabby Parker lives and writes by the beach in South Carolina. She teaches English at Coastal Carolina University, where she received her M.A. in Writing. Her work has been previously published in Sky Island Journal. When not engaging in some form of art, Gabby can be found spending time with family or asking to pet a stranger’s dog.