NOTIONS OF FREEDOM

Dear Spike,

Today you turned 16 years old. 

There is a question that just about everyone asks when someone reaches this age. It is a question that, at least in past generations, has been tied to notions of freedom, responsibility, and emerging adulthood. 

Did you get your driver's license?

You did not. And you seem to have no plans to do so any time soon. And that's OK. It does not mean you are not interested in freedom. You are. It does not mean you are not an exceptionally responsible person. You are. It does not mean you are not emerging, quite healthily, into adulthood. You most certainly are.

When my dear friend, Stephen, moved back to England last year he sold us his Mini Cooper at the "family rate." I'm not actually sure what he could have gotten for that vehicle, but I'm quite certain he took a loss on the deal to ensure that his family's cherished little car would go to a good home. I bought it with the intention of it being your vehicle, but your mother drives it for the most part, right now, and that is fine. It will be yours if and when you wish for it to be so.

Sometimes, when the parking lot at the high school stadium is vacant, or something close to it, I park the car and tell you to switch seats with me, and you drive it around the lot, neck straining to see over the hood because, alas, you are quite small, even for a Mini Cooper. You're a good driver. Or, at least, you are a good driver in a parking lot. And I have not pressured you much to do much more than that. When the zombie apocalypse commences you will know how to operate a vehicle, and there will be no one to ticket you for not having a license in any case. Thus, I have done my job as your father. 

Life is different now than it was a generation and two and three ago, when a license and a car were a rite of passage in middle-class America that everyone from Dinah Shore to Woody Guthrie to Nat King Cole to Chuck Berry to Bo Diddley to Bob Dylan to Janis Joplin to Tom Waits to Bruce Springsteen to Roger Taylor to Smokey Robinson to Aretha Franklin to Tracy Chapman to Billy Ocean to Cyndi Lauper to Melissa Etheridge to Taylor Swift has written and sung about. And it's not just that rideshares and public transit apps and work-from-home and doorstep delivery has made having a car a little less necessary than it seemed once upon a time. It's also that the world feels more stressful, and while driving isn't much more dangerous than it ever was, it's still The Wind in the Willows out there and everybody is Mr. Toad.

All of this brings me to a point beyond driving — and something I'm so proud of you for. Like a lot of people your age, and for perfectly valid reasons, you deeply feel the stresses of this world. I don't need to enumerate the ways in which life as a teenager in the 2020s — looking out into life as an adult in the 2030s and 2040s and 2050s and beyond — might feel fraught, with a new trauma not-so-well hidden around every corner. These things can go without saying. But you're figuring out, a little bit here and a little bit there, how to coexist with all of that stress. Imperfectly, sure, but nonetheless, you're learning to weather these storms — making decisions that I was not mature enough to make when I was 16 and, indeed, that I was not forced to make for the sake of my mental health. One of those decisions is that you've opted not to drive, at least for now. And, I'll be damned, in many ways that's actually given you more freedom. In may ways it's a sign that you are more responsible. In many ways it's one of the most adult choices you've made. It's funny how things work sometimes.

And honestly, it's been good for me. Because I'm often your driver, for now. And sometimes we drive and talk and talk and talk some more. And other times we cruise in silence. And I'm OK, either way, because I know how precious time with a teen-aged child is. And maybe somebody should write a song about that, you know? 

Because there you are, in my passenger seat, 16 years old and so very smart and so very funny and so very wise and so very hardworking. You know words I don't. You speak of Shakespearean characters as thought you're talking about friends and neighbors. You describe the human experience in ways that I think about for days and weeks and months thereafter. You tell stories, rich and vivid and sad and funny and so very true. You stare out the window and pick apart the world and put it back together in such fascinating ways that I can't help but marvel at that glorious brain inside your head. And I can't wait to see what adventures this year brings for you, as you get more and more comfortable in the driver's seat of your own life, metaphorical though it might remain.

Love,
dad