Safety Belt

So, here is a writing exercise: Remember a photo that means something to you. Describe what is happening in the photo in present tense. Who is in the photo? What is just outside the reach of the camera's lens? What are you thinking? What might the other person be thinking?

"How can this be my baby?" I ask myself.

Jayna is sitting in the drivers' seat of my green Mazda 626. Her hands are resting responsibly at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock on the wheel. The seatbelt harness fits neatly over her shoulder and buckles her safely in place. She is wearing a black knit cap trimmed with bands of red and gray. Her long patchwork skirt is a crazy mismatch of color that reminds me that this flower child of mine has missed her decade by more than 30 years.

It is Easter. We are in the deserted Shaw's parking lot in North Beverly. And, she is practicing her driving skills. Newly turned sixteen, she is eager to learn the rules of the road. We have spent the afternoon in the empty lot working on the fine details of parallel parking, anti-lock brakes, and any other driving exercise I can dream up.

I am so proud and so petrified when I think that she will soon be officially on the road and a little bit farther from the safety of home.

We have stopped the lessons to talk for a while. The keys still hang in the ignition.

It has been several years since she told me, in that lurching way that adolescent girls break free from their mothers, that she wasn't sure she loved me anymore. At the time, it felt like she broke up with me, and I sobbed myself to sleep. In the months and years since then, we have made a new relationship. It is a wary sort of truce, but it is growing into something better.

This afternoon though, it is hard to remember ever being anything but close.

I step out of the car and lean in through the window to take her picture. Her smile is that of a girl well on her way to becoming a woman.

I wonder if I can really let her go. Maybe, just maybe, I think, I can hold onto her a while longer. Then I remember what small freedoms mean to the growth of the soul.

How bad can it be? She already has the keys, and I did teach her to wear a seatbelt.