Driving My Kids Wild

Making the best of long commutes with kids

I spend a lot of my time in the car. My children go to school in a town about forty minutes away, so that means at least three hours of my day is spent behind the wheel. Luckily for me, we live in a county with a particularly lovely landscape so at least the commute is aesthetically pleasing, if not wildly entertaining. But I suppose a wildly entertaining commutes are not in the cards for many of us (and that’s probably a good thing, in terms of safety). But once in a while it gives me pause to consider how many hours of my life have been spent in this liminal state, going from one place to another. How much of my adult life is now spent in warrior mode, trying to pay strict, 180-degree attention to my surroundings. My father, who grew up and himself learned to drive in The Bronx, New York, taught me to drive and always emphasized the importance of using my entire field of vision while driving. This is not to say that my mother didn’t spend some time in the passenger’s seat while I was learning to drive, it’s just that we all know there is usually one parent who laughs in the face of danger and one who can’t help but gasp and clutch every handle within reach. Suffice it to say, my mother did not find my dangerous driving humorous. One night I failed to yield to an oncoming car while turning left, “because I never learned that!” and I don’t think she spent much time in the car with me after that, unless she was driving.

Coincidentally, when I was in high school, I used to make the same daily commute I make now, but in the opposite direction. There was a small group of us attending a high school out of town. Before any of us were old enough to drive, and lacking any form of public transportation that would fit our needs, our parents coordinated a carpool and took turns getting us to and from school. The ride to school was usually filled with chatter and music while we all adjusted to the morning. I would hastily do my makeup in in the backseat, applying too-orange concealer and copious amounts of black eyeliner while pouting into a tiny compact mirror. The morning drive always went by quickly, filled with last-minute shoe-tying or twisting of hair into miniscule, plastic butterfly clips, before we all tumbled out onto campus. But the afternoons were always different, as each of us had extra-curricular activities after school.  

Aria and her dad, Ralph

The days my dad picked me up were my favorite. For forty minutes I had the undivided attention of someone who, while quite possibly just zoning out, was listening without judging me in any way. I felt completely comfortable with my dad, like I could tell him anything and everything, gauging scenes I was setting and secrets I was divulging by his response (which, again, might have been a questionable choice due to his dubious attention level. I’m a parent now. I know how these things go). But all jokes aside, I loved having that time to talk to my dad, with no distractions. Sometimes I would even let him talk too, although I am sure it wasn’t often. He would tell stories about his life, mostly from his childhood in New York or about the brief five years between high school and my birth, when he and my mother first lived in California. In between anecdotes he would throw in life and driving lessons. Concepts of Zen Buddhism intermingled with debates about song lyrics and facts about the Marx brothers, particularly Harpo Marx. Suddenly interrupting a quiet moment to quiz me about what I noticed in my peripheral vision. Teasing me because I missed whatever he noticed, and using that as an excuse to teach me a lesson about using my entire field of vision while driving. Meanwhile, I would explain entire film and musical theater plots in laborious detail, with numerous tangents, and unquestionable backtracking, my oral storytelling trademarks. Lucky him.

Aria and her dad, Ralph, 1987

Now that I am a parent with a particularly talkative oldest child/front-seat passenger, once in while I hear myself repeating my father’s words. I notice a quiet moment and I can’t even stop myself before suddenly quizzing Alako about what wild animal I just saw out of the corner of my eye, which he inevitably misses (which I think is the point. Well played, Dad), so I can triumphantly laugh and pass on a life lesson about using one’s entire field of vision while driving. But the majority of the time we either play games, talk or sing together. The games are simple animal guessing games, with explicit rules established by the children. Sometimes we will play all the way to school, although I need to be strategic about whose turn it is at drop-off or an argument inevitably ensues and everyone starts the day on the wrong foot because someone didn’t guess a very particular type of lizard (thank you, Wild Kratts). Some days, if my brain has acclimated to the day enough, I am a moderately enthusiastic guesser. But if I’m being perfectly honest, I prefer when it’s my turn because then I can just relax and let them guess while I focus on driving.

For years I didn’t even turn on music when I was driving with the kids. Not because I needed quiet to focus, but because when Alako was little he used to cry when I sang too loud. I have a big, deep voice and loud belt Alako now calls my “sonic boom.” For those who don’t know, sperm whales can produce sonic booms that stun their prey, giant squid. You might be wondering where I learned this information and if you guessed it was from my child during our animal guessing game, you would be spot on. My voice has a tendency to be on the loud side, such that if the acoustics are good enough in the room, I can work without a mic. So I was very cautious about singing too loudly when I noticed Alako humming along to the musical I happened to be listening to at the time, Bright Star. I wondered if maybe, like his father, I could entice him into loving the world of musical theater. Then one day on the way to school, I could see him concentrating on one particular verse of a song, listening intently to the lyrics the way I do,

Alako climbing a tree on our drive

“Whoa, Mama, take a second look

before you set your sights on me

I’m a restless small-town boy,

with a heart as wild as big city.”

My little eight-year-old turned to me and said, “Well, my heart is as wild as a big city!” and my mama heart just melted. I was reminded once again what a kindred spirit I have in him. After listening to Bright Star over and over again, we listened to several other musicals until Alako fell in love with Hamilton. It wasn’t long before parents were texting me from playdates, asking if it was OK that the boys were all listening to and singing along with Hamilton. It was wholesome and adorable as the time I came to pick up Alako from aftercare when he was in second grade. The woman in charge grinned, pointed to the corner of the room, and quietly said, “all the second-grade boys have been knitting quietly together in that corner for almost an hour.” A group of little boys was indeed propped around one corner of the cozy aftercare room, Alako among them, knitting fastidiously as little gnomes.

And somehow, perhaps now that he has experienced singing along to Hamilton in the car with other loud boys, or singing over his sister who has a powerful voice in her own right, Alako has grown to tolerate the volume of my voice. I am allowed, even encouraged, by my son to sing along in the car. Sometimes we even trade off singing parts in songs together, although that is rare because we both forget and sing all the parts. But by far my favorite musical experience in the car with Alako is when we first purchased the soundtrack to Encanto. I took him less than week to learn every single word. Every single day he would get in the car, turn on the music, and sing every single word of every single song, from beginning to end. The moment he hopped back in the car at the end of the day, it was the same thing. I will never forget watching him out of the corner of my eye as he attempted to sing the overlapping parts in “Bruno.” Once or twice, I was allowed to sing the part of Tio Félix (“I’m sorry mi vida, go ooooonnn”), but there was no guarantee the part was solely mine. One time I suggested that he sing all the boy parts and myself or Ailey sing the girl parts and he was so offended that he turned away and didn’t speak to me or sing the entire drive home. I sure learned never to suggest that again.

Aria, photo taken by Alako, 2020

The drives are long and I make twenty trips per week. There are many negatives about making such a long commute, but the time we get to spend together, bonding, singing, guessing, playing, discussing, and laughing is time I would never, ever trade. We encounter all kinds of magic on our drive. Once we were making up a fairy tale in which our protagonist met a cow in the road only to round the bend and encounter a huge buck, enormous antlers ghostly in the misty morning. We have a named a trio of animals we see each day: a beautiful palomino Clydesdale is Trina; a rust and cream blotted appaloosa is Bijihana; and the elderly red steer who reminds me of Ludo from Labyrinth, is Bongo. I can’t say that without those hours stuck in the car together we would spend such an extended period of time entertaining ourselves as a group. At home we tend to split up to our own activities, coming together for meals or entertainment. I hope that one way or another we always find time to talk and play together, whether we are stuck commuting together or not. And someday I might even let him drive, although I guarantee I will be holding onto every handle I can find.