For more information on the writing project, check out This I Believe on NPR. Very cool.
I believe in smiling and letting people merge into your lane. When I was a new driver, I was afraid of everything: left turns, having to stop at a red light at the top of a hill, acceleration lanes, driving on parkways. You name it; I feared it. Driving a ‘77 Duster with a standard shift on the column that jammed often didn’t help things, either. Back then, an automatic shift was “extra” and gears and a clutch were considered “standard.” Air conditioning and FM radio: extra. My parents, with 6 children, a mortgage, and civil service paychecks, traveled standard.
We spent a lot of time in the car as a family. Not the Duster, that was a later, second car. As a group, we traveled in a station wagon, most memorably, a light blue, 1964 Chevy Impala. Usually, that meant the eight of us with my father at the wheel, my maternal grandmother, and, sometimes, our dog. For the first leg of most trips Gram was great. But after a while, we became too much to bear. We drove down to Florida twice, to Lake Dunmore in Vermont for at least six summers, and up to Rockland County to visit our first cousins about 10 times a year. We often tried to sneak one of them in the car for the ride home, but our contraband never made it to the George Washington Bridge.
We also took shorter, more routine road trips: to my father’s side of the family, to the precinct to pick up his paycheck, to our family doctor’s office about 30 minutes away, and to various family or friends’ homes for “house parties.”
It was in the car that I often witnessed my father’s way of interacting with the world. I remember being stopped at a red light, and my father telling us, at just the right moment, to blow it out. It always worked. I remember one time when I was fourteen I was so embarrassed because my red headed and red bearded father was bopping and singing Rockin’ Robbin at the toll booth on the Throggs Neck Bridge.
My father drove slowly, almost sauntering down Hillside Avenue, coming home from my Grandma’s house in Richmond Hill. He would sing hymns in Latin, vociferous protests from the peanut gallery notwithstanding. We did not understand the words, but I could probably hum a bar or two these many years later.
And, if there was anyone in our path experiencing car trouble, we were doomed. Dad stopped and helped until the car was back on the road. I remember one rainy night on the way home from somewhere, we saw two nuns waiting at a bus stop. We knew we were in for a detour – it was at least an hour before Dad got them safely to their convent—in the Bronx. If there was an accident, we pulled over. My father was a police officer and as far as he was concerned, he was on duty 24-7. He was also just a regular guy who lived by the Golden Rule. For some reason, it was so evident when we were in the car.
When I witness drivers behaving badly-- cutting each other off, flipping the bird, honking, yelling, or worse, I slow down, smile, and think of my father. Yes, I believe in smiling and letting people merge into your lane. I believe that as we journey through life, we need to let people in and give them a hand, even if it’s sometimes a little out of our way.
