There were plenty of tears when
we drove baby Cooper home from the hospital. I shed every single one.
I was exhausted from childbirth,
in awe of the little human suddenly in our care, eager to get home and, most of
all, terrified of the cars and trucks zooming by. I sat in the backseat,
hovering over our newborn, acutely aware of our charge to protect him in an
unpredictable world.
I thought of every worst-case
traffic scenario during that drive home, all the while falling more in love
with our chunky, dark-haired, blue-eyed pumpkin.
The whole scene was a pretty
good preview of parenting in general, with alternating moments of hyperactive
worry and intense bliss.
For example, when Cooper became
mobile:
He's crawling! He's standing!
He's walking! This is so exciting!
Oh, my goodness. He's going to
hit his head on the coffee table. He's going to slam cabinet doors on his
fingers. He's going to tumble down the stairs.
Repeat when he ventures outside:
He loves to run barefoot through
the grass.
Fire ants will attack him!
He's so friendly, running to say
hello to neighbors.
Stop running across the street
without holding my hand!
All these years later, the
pattern continues.
Cooper rides his bike about
half-a-mile to and from school each day. He wears a helmet (most of the time)
and obeys traffic rules (as far as I know). I'm not worried about his behavior
as much as I am the drivers around him.
He navigates a four-way stop,
often manned by crossing guards, but sometimes he goes in early or stays late,
and then he's on his own, at the mercy of folks who don't always pay attention
or stop when they're supposed to.
Sometime in the next year, that
bike is likely to be replaced by a car (a sensible, used car, to be sure). In
anticipation of that monumental shift, Cooper is taking driver's education,
working toward a learner's permit to be followed by hours of practice behind
the wheel.
My worst-case scenario
tendencies are in overdrive.
A motorcycle screams by on the
Tollway. A sports car swerves in and out of lanes. A pickup truck ignores a
stop sign.
My first thought in all of these
cases: How would Cooper handle this as a brand-new driver? My second thought:
Do teenagers really need to drive? Followed quickly by: Maybe we should move
way out to the country, where cattle outnumber vehicles.
I'm not necessarily concerned
about his abilities (though he hasn't actually operated a car yet, so that
worry may be mounting). It's all the other stuff that troubles me: lanes closed
for construction, distracted drivers, thunderstorms, fog.
I consider the split-second
decisions we all make as drivers — how much distance to allow between cars,
when to start applying brakes, crossing traffic without a light, yielding,
changing lanes — and wonder how a teen's brain processes it all and makes sound
decisions.
I think of my own early driving
years, in my own used (and completely unreliable) car. I recall all those times
my 1975 Audi stalled simply because it was raining. I remember the first time I
drove on the Tollway — accidentally because I was in the wrong lane of the
service road. I sometimes drove too fast, rolled through stop signs, turned
right on red when I shouldn't have.
I made mistakes. I learned from
them. It's what I hope for my own children.
Way back in July 2001, I had no
idea how many times parenting would lead me to wrestle with fear and elation
all at once. Even today, I'm unsure of how many more tears will fall, but
experience assures me that the joy of new beginnings has the power to dwarf all
the worries.
Tyra Damm is a Dallas native,
veteran journalist, fourth-grade teacher and Dallas
Morning News Briefing columnist since 2008. She lives in Frisco and
writes about family life and parenting. She can be reached at tyradamm@gmail.com.
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