The Day I Had to Give Up My Car Keys

One day, while backing out of our steep driveway, my foot slipped off the brake. Careening toward the street, pumping my foot into the empty space where I thought the brake should be, I panicked. People might be walking by, or maybe a kid on a bike, or a passing car. I screamed. When the car jolted onto the asphalt, I steered it in a tight circle and halted without hitting anything or anyone.

No police officer had witnessed what happened. No one was hurt. But as I processed my fright and wrestled with what my lack of control might mean for my future, my mind sought out a happier memory: the day of my first big driving adventure in Europe, decades ago.

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I was 22. On my first day in England, I could barely manage the rented car’s manual transmission while sitting on the right side and driving in the left lane, the opposite of everything my high school driver’s ed class had drilled into me. But within days, I was maneuvering through English roundabouts and downshifting to pass other vehicles on roads through heather-covered moors in Cornwall. By the time I flew to Madrid to meet friends, I felt like an experienced driver.

Rome proved me wrong. While driving through a plaza, a shrill whistle sounded. A policeman was signaling for me to stop. Seconds earlier, he had just been standing on a podium, waving his arms like a mechanical marionette. No one seemed to obey him. Cars crisscrossed the square with no apparent order. Now he was pointing at us. Somehow I had drifted into the wrong end of a one-way street.

My friends and I laughed the whole way to the hotel, but after that I was more careful. No speeding on the autobahn in Germany as we headed toward Paris; no chances taken on the multilane roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe.

Back home, adulthood sped by, but there was a constant theme: cars and the freedom they meant to me. There was a red sports model coaxed out of my father because its logo matched my initials; a blue midsize with a white interior that was wildly impractical for a family with three kids; a red minivan; and finally, another red sedan, bought in my late 60s, that would eventually need both bumpers replaced because I kept misjudging curbs and walls in parking lots. At least it had room for my walker.

But by my 70s I had to acknowledge, at first only to myself, that something had changed. Driving no longer felt like fun. Other cars tailgated me because I stayed within the posted speed limits, unsure of my ability to maintain control at higher speeds.

After the near catastrophe on my driveway, the ghost memory of that Italian policeman came back to me. But now his message was clear: I needed to surrender my car keys.