Driving at Night
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| 10/15/2008 |
by Ames S.
amess@sober24.comI’ve always loved driving at night, ever since I was a kid. There’s a
sense of freedom, of mystery, an exhilaration in how the horizon, so
compelling during the day, narrows in the darkness as if it had been
passed through a funnel and was spewing out little more than a tiny
patch of illumination from the headlights in front.
There’s something comforting, a kind of safety in obscurity, an anonymity where there are no distractions, no competing interests beyond the disembodied approach and disappearance of the headlights from other cars, impersonal, stripped of nearly all defining characteristics.
Of course, there are those occasional rogues with just one headlight, or those with a kind of palsied blinking indicating a loose connection somewhere in the electrical system, or those new incandescent headlights that are more laser than light, but, for the most part, the cars that come and go in the night are indistinguishable from one another, nothing more than oncoming or receding light.
When I was young, my family used to drive from New York to Cape Cod for a week’s vacation around the Fourth of July, traveling at night, jammed together in our station wagon – kids, pets, et al. I remember those rare occasions where I was allowed to sit up front, on the long seat between my father and mother, my head just barely rising above the level of the dashboard. There was no talking during these drives, no idle chitchat, no complaining. Sitting up front was a kind of reward in itself, and every so often I would sneak a glance back at my brother and sister, their faces distant and glum as the miles clicked by. But up front there was the radio, with its push button stations and fading signal, spitting out unfamiliar country western songs and weird ethnic music that devolved into unintelligible hayfields of static as we passed out of range or dipped into low-lying valleys.
Part of my job, as the designated kid in the front seat – a job I have since passed on to my own kids -- was to man the radio, searching for new stations as each one faded. The number of stations found, then lost, was a measure of our progress, as the call letters got more and more obscure and the accents of the DJs shifted slightly as we passed from state to state.
But, most of what I remember is the lights -- the silent focus as oncoming cars got closer, the momentary blindness as we passed, giving way to the darkness and obscurity once more.
When I was drinking, I liked driving at night just as much as when I was a kid, but for different reasons. I liked it mostly because there was nobody else on the road – a safety precaution, if nothing else. Driving under the influence was always an exercise in flexibility. With little or no traffic to contend with, curves became a little broader, lanes a little wider. Nevertheless, there was a hidden danger I hadn’t counted on and didn’t recognize until I found myself manacled to a radiator in a state police barracks after being pulled over for DUI. It seems I had been veering into oncoming traffic, drawn by the approaching headlights like a moth to a flame, pulling off at the last minute and swerving back into my own lane.
Getting sober certainly helped my driving skills, though it never did cure me of my passion for driving at night. For me, it’s a kind of meditation, a process of emptying out space, getting rid of old thoughts and making way for new ones.
Just last week, my family and I drove up to Maine for the long Columbus Day weekend to visit my brother. It was ten o’clock before we even left the city and by the time we passed through Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the roads were nearly deserted, the kids and my wife were asleep, and I was half-listening to the radio as one station after another faded in and out of range.
Hitting the Maine turnpike, a long stretch of open road, I found myself thinking about a series of work-related problems that had been plaguing me recently. I knew there was nothing that could be done until the weekend was over, yet the more I thought about them the more convoluted and negative they became. Like small mice, they began to multiply.
Alone on the road except for the occasional set of headlights, these gnawing thoughts filled my head, squeezing out the excitement I felt about getting away for a few days with my family.
Needing a break from my own negative thoughts, I opened the car window. The air was bracing and fresh, filled with the intermingled scents of seawater and pine, and I pictured the wind blowing through my head, catching the edge of one of the negative thoughts circulating in my brain and sucking it out the car window. Soon another blew out, then another, and before long, like leaves scattering in the wind, the negativity began to disperse.
The cold air, however, woke my daughter who was sitting in the front seat.
“Could you shut that window?” she asked.
“In a minute,” I said, as I felt the last few dregs disappearing from my mind, sucked up like loose pennies in a vacuum cleaner.
“How soon till we get there?” she asked sleepily, her face momentarily illuminated by the passing headlights of a car.
“Not too long,” I responded, starting to feel connected again. “Maybe you could get something on the radio,” I asked.
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