I didn’t know my father well. He died last year (after several years of being mostly gone due to strokes). He wasn’t an easy person to understand. In the decades that I knew him, I could count on one hand the number of times that he went internal and talked about what was going on inside him. We are so different in that way – introspective is my favorite state.

Recently, something got me started remembering his driving.

When I was very young, I thought that  freeways were an endless race. And considering the number of cars my dad passed, I thought we had a good shot at winning the race. If only we didn’t always have to exit to go to grandma’s house! He had an MG Midget which he adored and gave up because it had no room for kids. He knew everything about cars and spent much time tinkering with ours.

Conversely, coming back after any trip, when he got to our neighborhood, he would slow to a maddening crawl. Was he surveying his domain? Or reluctant to return home?

My stomach still clutches at the memory of drives back from family holiday get-togethers when he was dangerously drunk. One night he went on and on about how interesting it was to see double of everything: twice the lanes, twice the traffic signals. As soon as I got my driver’s license I became our designated driver. Thinking about this still infuriates me. It might be time to think about forgiveness. Now that I have learned about addiction (because Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict), I see that my father was probably a high functioning alcoholic. He drank every day. But it was the family gatherings that were most noticeably out of control.

Only after my father retired was I aware of him having much fun. (Did he change or did I grow up?) Golf was a big part of that retirement pleasure. My kids got their first driving lesson in his golf cart. They were 10, maybe, and for years afterwards gleefully informed me of all the stuff he let them try, as soon as they were out of my sight. He was a complete control freak but just as big a rebel when it came to other people’s rules. In this case mine.