First Person is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
Illustration by Kumé Pather
For most of us, there’s a moment when we realize that life is dangerous. One distracted step off the curb or a sneeze on the highway and it could all be over in an instant. Usually, we reach this grim conclusion after we’re confronted with the untimely death of a loved one, or upon the discovery of a hard lump in soft tissue one evening in the bath. But for me, even my earliest memories are deeply anxious ones. Despite a sheltered upbringing in relative safety, in my mind, danger was everywhere all the time. As my siblings scrambled up tall, unstable-looking trees and dove headfirst into dark lakes and deep oceans, I remained resolutely on solid ground, scanning the horizon for dangers that never came.
Driving always seemed catastrophically dangerous. Whenever we would drive across a bridge, onto a ferry, or along a mountain pass I would whisper a prayer over and over and pull out my eyelashes, a ritual that I was convinced would keep us safe from plunging into water or being crushed by falling boulders.
When I finally passed my learner’s test at the age of 17 on the fifth try, my patient father was reluctant to criticize my driving, even as I careened past stop signs I couldn’t see through my tears and plowed into a neighbour’s minivan after mixing up the pedals. Every involuntary wince or sharp intake of breath from my usually calm father reinforced my certainty that I could not, and should not, drive. Life was already dangerous enough – why add a one-ton killing machine to the mix? For five years, he tried in his gentle way to teach me and I did everything to avoid driving until he eventually gave up and resigned himself to chauffeuring me around well into my twenties.
“Learn to drive” was my secret New Year’s resolution every year for 13 years. Thanks to Vancouver’s excellent transit system and an abundance of generous friends with cars, I managed to put it off until one night in 2016, when my husband started vomiting blood into a battered mixing bowl at 2 a.m. An ambivalent ambulance dispatcher told us the wait would be an hour, and the taxis I ordered never arrived. As the colour drained from my husband’s face, we waited desperately for my father, who lived 40 minutes away, to drive us to the closest hospital, which was five minutes from our apartment. That night, I paid for 10 driving lessons on my credit card while sitting in the waiting room as Craig slowly regained his colour in the intensive care ward.
A week later, I found my instructor, Maria, waiting for me in the parking lot of the closest driving school. Maria was tiny, less than five feet tall, and wrapped in a long pink parka. From the off, she made it clear that she had zero interest in indulging my driving anxiety. “In you get!” she yelled, tossing me the keys to an ancient Ford Fiesta and installing herself in the passenger seat, her foot hovering over the instructor’s emergency brake.
Over the next five weeks, I learned to change lanes and parallel park, with Maria steadfastly refusing to let me cancel lessons or pull over to cry. With two sweaty hands firmly gripping the steering wheel, it was impossible to pull out any of my eyelashes. Eventually, with Maria’s calm firmness and the safety net of that emergency brake, I was driving competently through Vancouver at rush hour, over bridges and through tunnels.
If Maria noticed that I was more anxious than the average learner, she never mentioned it, but I noticed that she followed every instruction with “when you feel safe.” In our first lesson, I jokingly told her that I never felt safe. She looked into my face and said, with all seriousness, “you’re safe,” while giving the emergency brake a gentle kick. I almost believed her.
My husband and I were due to move to England the next month, and I was determined to get my licence. I booked my road test three days before we were scheduled to leave, and I drove Maria’s Ford to the testing centre, my confidence draining away as it came into view. “I think you can pass, but if not we’ll try again,” Maria said as she bustled me in.
The test felt as if it lasted for hours. I slowed cautiously in school zones and waved pedestrians across crosswalks while blinking back tears. When we arrived back at the testing centre, the assessor told me I had passed, barely, and that I had “good vibes” and “a great attitude.” Drenched in sweat and shaking, I thanked her, doing my best impression of a relaxed person. I gave Maria a covert thumbs up as I had my picture taken. “Really?” she mouthed back to me, eyebrows raised in visible surprise, misled perhaps by my tear-stained face.
When we arrived in England later that week, I realized that I didn’t know how good I had it back in Vancouver, with its wide roads, grid system and traffic lights. English roads seemed like an impossible maze of tiny streets and tunnels. Cars lined up behind me at the entrance to roundabouts, leaning on their horns as I craned my neck to see around the corner, unsure of how to gauge the speed and distance between each passing car.
Four years later, after plenty of tearful meltdowns in parking lots, I have gradually worked myself up to driving alone. I’ve gone from requiring total silence on car journeys to being able to listen to the radio. Previously, I found Google Maps too overwhelming and so I navigated using road signs and memory, with varying degrees of success. Now I catch myself looking out the windows on long solo drives, admiring neon yellow fields of rapeseed and green pastures full of lambs. This spring, my family came to visit me in England after a long separation due to COVID-19. I picked them up from the airport and we chatted happily as I drove us home, the radio on in the background.
For anxious people, the urge to hide and quit and rely on others is always there. The past few years have only deepened my feeling that the world is a fundamentally scary place, that our human bodies are fragile and that, ultimately, how much time we are allotted on Earth is mostly down to chance. But, still, I am happier – driving, swimming in the North Sea and travelling on my own. Now that I’m in my midthirties, a small number of people depend on me and I am determined to care for them, even when I feel that familiar grip of fear. I am ready to take them wherever they need to go.
Caitrin Innis lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Sign up for the weekly Parenting & Relationships newsletter for news and advice to help you be a better parent, partner, friend, family member or colleague.