This has been something I’ve hoped and wished and prayed she wanted to do for so many years. She finally “came upon” the decision on her own. She has been overseas studying and decided that if she wanted mobility more than subways and tubes and buses, she had better understand how to become mobile in a form of transportation she could control and access without someone else setting the timeline.

When she first mentioned it, I wanted to leap right in and say, “I’ll teach you” but I knew that was never going to be acceptable. After all, I’m her baba and babas are not cool. She has no patience for me and we’d never get very far in the endeavor. So, I said instead, “if you want to learn, I’ll pay for it.” I meant this wholeheartedly. She’s decided to take me up on the offer and I asked her again today as we were in my recently deceased father’s car driving back from his place if she was still interested in learning to drive? She said yes and would look into the schools. I did say, “there are two things you should however, know how to do: change a tire, and change the oil”. She looked at me and said, “well I can do the first one, I’ve watched plenty of tiktok videos” (ahem). Oh govinda save us from tiktok experts. I’m hoping she’ll let me teach her how to change a tire and the oil in whatever car she eventually gets. We’ll see. Baby steps. She’s agreed. Now, she has to find a school that will teach her. Part of the ride consisted of my asking her road-worthy questions. The kind they ask on the written portion of the test (well, it has been over 40 years so perhaps horse and buggy test) and she knew some of them and declared “oh, come on, everyone knows this stuff, it’s common sense”. I wanted to point out, common sense isn’t always common.

Baby steps.