He gives a gift of confidence

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

I am sitting in the car, in the passenger seat. My daughter, the 16-year-old, is behind the wheel. She is learning to drive, and I am teaching her, telling her when to speed up, to slow down, to move a little to the left, to be careful of the ice on the road.

I hardly breathe while she drives. I keep my foot poised on an invisible brake. I see a child next to me, a little girl far too young to be driving a car.

My hands are fists as we travel down Dedham Street.

"Can you see where you're going?" I ask.

"I can see fine," my daughter says.

"You're coming to a rotary soon. Do you know what to do?"

She nods. "Dad taught me."

She says the word "Dad" with unconditional conviction. If Dad says something about driving then it is so.

"I don't want to hurt your feelings," she told me a week ago, "but Dad's a much better teacher than you are."

I know this. Dad rides with loose reins. He lets her drive all the time - at rush hour, at night, on dark roads, on Routes 128 and 95. He even lets her drive to places she's never been before. "She has to get used to it," he says. "She has to learn."

I am afraid for her to learn, so I pull at the bit.

"Not now," I tell her. "People are in a hurry to get home. It's too dark. It's too far. You can drive later."

Dad gives her confidence. I give her orders.

"Be sure you look to see what's coming," I say as we approach the rotary. "Don't cut out in front of anyone."

She slows down, looks to her left, presses on the gas, then eases into traffic. "Where do I go now?" she asks me.

"See that gray car over there. Just follow it," I say. "What route is that?" she wants to know. "Dad always tells me the route."

Something in the way she says this, in her words or her tone, or some trick of light, maybe, the streetlight flicking on, or the glint of the setting sun in the rear-view mirror, makes me turn to my daughter and see, just for an instant, not her behind the wheel, but me.

There I am in my high school uniform, clutching a different, bigger wheel and staring straight ahead. There I am, not on a rotary in Dedham but on Chestnut Street in Randolph, with my father beside me, driving past Tower Hill, down Grove Street all the way to the end where Grove Street meets North Main. Traffic is steady at this time of day. People are driving home from work; there is no break as far as I can see. My father says, "Wait, take your time. We're in no hurry."

I am not even slightly nervous. I am in control. When there is no traffic, I step on the gas and cut across two lanes. I glance at my father and he is smiling. I drive up Liberty Street with a smile on my face, too.

My mother worries all the time we're gone. I know this. She worries that I will forget to look before I pull into traffic. She worries that some stranger will forget to look and cut in front of me. She says to my father, every time he hands me the keys, "Why are you teaching her to drive? Why can't you see she's too young?"

"I'm not too young," I used to argue. And I wasn't. I knew what I was doing. My father had taught me what to do. This is what I remember in a flash, as my daughter drives onto Route 128.

My father was my ally. He never said a road was too dangerous. He never said there was some maneuver I could not do.

The morning I was scheduled to take my driver's test I woke up to snow. The forecast was for snow all day, but my father didn't say, "Let's put this off. Let's wait for a sunny day." He got in the car on the passenger side and I drove over slippery roads. When it came time for the test, I did a three-point turn on a snow-covered hill without a bit of doubt that I could.

Confidence is what my father gave me so many years ago - confidence that I could drive any where, any time.

Confidence is what my husband gives my daughter now. He tells her she can, and she does. I need to do the same. I want to do the same.

But I sit with my hands clenched, because no matter what my mind tells me, no matter how I equate her with me, I still see a child behind the wheel, my little girl far too young to drive