On The Road

Going all the way back to our years of dating in college, MrsDarwin and I have always enjoyed driving together. We're both calm drivers, and sitting next to each other eating up the miles is a great way to get time to talk together. Talking together is something we always like.

Well, today we drove 2.5 hours to Cincinnati in the afternoon and then the same 2.5 back in the evening and didn't talk at all. The reason is that we were not sitting next to each other. I was in the passenger seat, and our eldest daughter was driving.

Ohio requires 50 hours of behind the wheel practice before one can take the driving test. Eldest Daughter is within five hours of that total after this trip, and we're trying to get her last hours in so she can take the test in the next couple weeks.

We're past the white knuckle stage of driving. I can now relax quite well while watching her drive, and although she's still at the total-focus stage of driving, she's no longer scared by it.

But in a year where we seem to keep having cause to contemplate the shifting stages of life -- it may just be a number, but turning forty seems to take us that way -- this seems yet another milestone.

Depending on who goes to college where, we will have at least one at-home offspring of driving age for most of the next 17 years, so I imagine there will be lots of drives during which we can't sit next to each other and discuss the sorts of things which come to mind when you've nothing to do but talk to each other for several hours at a time. And then, there will, we hope, be long years of sitting in the pilot and co-pilot seat together, having long talks as we drive into the sunset.