August 5, 2022
Colebrook earned his driver’s license last Thursday. Steph sat in the backseat during the driving part of the test, and she was amazed that the instructor gave him the thumbs up. Maybe the instructor could not see all his near-misses as well as she could from the back seat, she surmised. We have had this plan, whether license or not, that he would not be able to drive without a parent ‘til 17, just like my Dad invoked on me when I was a kid. We celebrated that night with Steph and I thinking blissfully that this really didn’t change anything.
And then Friday came and Steph got sick and she could not take Colebrook to work. So just like that, our baby, I mean toddler, I mean pre-schooler, I mean pre-teen, I mean, our legal driver, edged out onto M-22 all by his lonesome that morning for work at Cherry Republic. He safely parked and punched in and started delivering food at the Public House. Afterwards, he drove over to Joel’s to build mountain biking trails. And then off to play tennis with Tyler.
On Sunday night, I joined Steph in feeling under the weather myself just as she found out she had Covid. Colebrook and Hawthorn, thanks to Colebrook’s new access to the world, were staying out of our infectious paths. On Monday afternoon, while the boys had driven themselves to Palmer Woods, we parents spent a long afternoon stretched on our couch under thick comfy covers, with our feet crisscrossed like Charlie’s aunts and uncles on the mini bed in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a pleasure especially known to those who have put in the unrecoverable lost hours of thousands of drop offs and pickups.
