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I decided to do something a little different today. This is a story that’s not about how to get sober or stay sober. This is a story about why it’s worth it to get sober and stay sober.
I’ve written a few times about how for the past few months, my 16-year-old daughter has been learning to drive. I’ve done most of the driving with her, and we’ve had some significant ups and downs. As I have said before, if you want to talk about powerlessness and realizing your place in the world and the importance of praying to something bigger than yourself… hop in the passenger seat along side somebody who has been driving for 45 minutes in their entire life. You realize real quick that you are one wrong pedal push away from saying farewell to earth.
That might sound like a specific thing to that specific situation, but driving with her really helped me realize my place in the world. What control do I really have? Maybe I’m driving instead of my daughter, and maybe I am the best driver in the world… and somebody could barrel through an intersection and hit my car, anyway. It sounds depressing, but I always end up benefitting a lot from those moments when you stop trying to control everything and do what you can and let the rest go. When it comes to driving specifically, what else can you do other than to drive carefully and follow the rules and hope for the best? That means I control about 5% of every drive to the grocery store.
So back to my daughter driving. I was excited at first to drive with her. It felt like a real good opportunity to spend time together and to help her achieve a goal of hers. But oof, it was 40 hours of driving. That may not sound like too much. But it became very difficult for this self-centered person to have a long work day, then drive kids around to activities till 8 pm, then hop in the car with my 16-year-old at 9 pm to drive for 90 minutes up and down the streets of my town.
That was the thing that was brutal. It’s not like you can take a new driver and be like, “Hey, let’s go to New York City and burn off five hours of driving.” You have to build up slowly how to navigate neighborhoods and back roads and parking lots, and it takes awhile. We must have spent two hours just backing in and out of our driveway, parking on the street in front of our house, making K turns right out front… it got so monotonous and I just wanted to go watch the NBA Finals instead.
But we stuck with it, and chipped away and chipped away. It reminded me so much of early recovery, because when I had four days clean and sober, I wanted 30 days, and when I had 30 days, I wanted 90 days. But when I had four days, I had to get to five days first, and then six days. Same with driving—it was one-hour chunks at a time.
We also had some sadness along the way. One night we were driving and out of nowhere, three baby raccoons came barreling out onto the road and my daughter had no chance to avoid them. She hit them, and it was devastating. She started crying and I teared up a bit, too. She asked me if I thought any of them died and I immediately said, “No, I think they’re fine. One just bounced off the side of the car a little bit.” The raccoons were not fine, sadly, and I think she knew that.
As we kept driving, we had a good conversation about driving and doing the best you can and being careful of animals. It was a terrible moment, for sure, but my daughter was probably going to hit an animal in her car at some point and if it was going to happen, I was glad to be sitting beside her to help her work through it.
Okay, so let me get to the entire point of this rambling story. So we got to the 40 hours necessary to take the Connecticut driver’s test, and on Friday afternoon, we drove up to the DMV. She pulled into the spot and we went inside to check in. Then they called her name and she went out with a guy to take her driver’s test. I gotta tell you, I had some serious feels. We’d talked about how she was responsible for the effort, not the outcome, so she put in the work and if she didn’t pass, oh well, we’d come back and try again soon.
But as she walked away, it was one of those moments with your kids where you’re both incredibly happy and incredibly sad. I felt some sadness just because it was one of those times where you see, in a very blatant way, that they are growing up, that they won’t need you the same way some time very soon. I mean, she might have been going off for 10 minutes and then coming back with the ability to just get in a car and drive away! Holy. S**t.
The happy part is… I was there for the ride. Literally—I was there for 40 hours of bumpy rides, full of forgotten turn signals, with her. Ultimately, my goal as a parent is to give my kids a good life, try to fill their heads with good morals and decision-making skills, and then wave to them as they go out into the world to live their lives. It’s all stuff I learned in sobriety, and that includes living in the present, even if it’s at a DMV.
I didn’t last long sitting inside the DMV. I stood outside and walked up and down in front of the building. Finally I saw her turn back into the lot and pull around the side. I walked over toward her car and the guy got out and started walking back into the DMV. My daughter walked toward me with a good poker face. I couldn’t tell if she was about to cry in joy or sadness, and when she got near me, she quietly said, “I got almost a perfect score.”
I let out a yell. I almost yelled “F**k yeah!” because I was so proud of her. There was some ego involved, for sure, because she obviously could have never gotten her driver’s license without an incredible instructor such as myself. But I was mostly just happy for her. She set her mind to something and needed some help to get there, and she did it. She freaking did it.
Later that night, she asked if she could meet a friend at the movies. And so around 7 pm, I watched her slowly back her car out of the driveway to drive off by herself. It was not an impressive back out, let me tell you. She went a little sideways and had to pull forward and then back out again, so I wouldn’t say I was overflowing with confidence.
She said she’d be home around 10:10. I’d love to say that as the clock got to 10:12 pm, then 10:15, then 10:20, then 10:25, I was calm and collected and had learned from the beginning of this story about turning things over to the universe. But no, at 10:28, I put my shoes on and grabbed my car keys and stood looking out the window. I was ready to… well, I have no freaking idea what I was ready to do. Drive around randomly looking for her car? Drive over and listen in on 911 dispatch calls?
But at 10:29, I saw car lights turning into our driveway. She was home. I quickly ran over and took my shoes off and hung up my car keys and acted like I knew she had it under control the whole time.
The point of this entire story is that the benefits of sobriety don’t show up in obvious ways every single day. They’re there, of course—I just don’t pay attention to them. But then a big moment comes along and reiterates that it is so worth it.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
A drunk, fired because he loafed on the job, sought a letter of recommendation from his ex-boss. The employer, though eager to be honest, didn't want to hurt the worker's reputation. Having given it a good deal of though, he finally wrote the following:
"Dear Sir, You will be lucky if you can get this man to work for you."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Anonymous, from February 2007)
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