I CAN drive 55

On being in the driver's seat as another birthday comes down the road

Well, of all the ways I imagined my 55th birthday, beset by illness wasn’t one of them. Such is life, and it beats the alternative. It isn’t Covid, and it will pass.

I’m waiting for Bob Timmermann’s email checking in on my existential crisis, a tradition that began when I turned 40. But it was the day after that birthday when I made the promise to myself that I wouldn’t worry about another big birthday until I turned 80. And it has worked.

I embrace my age. I’m in disbelief at the digits, but I’m happy to be here. In my side pursuits as a novelist, it hasn’t been an easy year — although my mojo has rebounded with Slayed. But in terms of my inner self, I’m as much at peace as I have been in a very long time.

The headline to this post is more than a incredibly clever play on Sammy Hagar. One of the biggest signs of my personal progress is in the car. I used to be tense in the car so often, worried about being a minute later to a destination than I could be — even if it didn’t matter. I had to get from A to B as quickly as possible. I wasn’t a maniac out there, but I pushed myself hard and despaired if the lights or the traffic went against me. Waze was like heroin.

In therapy over the past two years, I was able to put my finger on a lifelong anxiety that I never knew I had. The feeling wasn’t alien, but understanding it was. The driving challenges were emblematic of the fear I was feeling all the time. My brilliant therapist and I have had ongoing conversations about this since the height of the pandemic, which had the unexpected benefit of keeping me out of the car nearly every day.

One solution I actually had before this explicit introduction to anxiety was to always leave early for any trip, often to the consternation of the rest of my family, to ease the burden on me when we were running behind. That did occasionally backfire, though.

A few years back, I got the family out of the house super early for a Dodger playoff game. I would put my ability to navigate traffic to and from Dodger Stadium up against anyone’s. Unfortunately, on this night, I made a gamble and got burned, and ended up in a choker of a line for the parking lot. By the time we actually did park, the game started and I was infuriated with myself, cursing myself. I could not calm myself down.