A Little Miscommunication

(We interrupt my chronic, daily worries about what will happen when Trump takes office to bring you a worry closer to home.)

I have been worried about the election and have wasted a lot of my precious brain energy thinking about it. Except for a day earlier this week. Then I didn’t think about it much at all. Because that day my daughter was driving from our home up to the Lake Tahoe ski resort where she will be working this winter. It was a blustery day down here at the 3200 foot elevation where we live, and snow was forecast for the mountains. I worried about her safety on the road, and the car (more on that later), and the weather. Especially the weather. Basically, all thoughts of the election and my other chronic worries dissipate when someone I love is driving in bad weather. Maybe you can relate.

We have one AWD car. My daughter needs it, since she is relocating to Tahoe for the season. Unfortunately, I need it too, since snow often blankets my little town as well. Some years, we’ve gotten feet of it. We thought we had a brilliant solution to this dilemma: my nephew was wanting to sell his Subaru Forester. She had saved enough money to buy it. All Subarus have AWD. Problem solved!

First, a little story about that car and why my nephew was eager to get rid of it: he bought it from a private party on Facebook Marketplace (buyer beware of private party sales, I guess). The seller told him that the car had 145,000 miles on it and presented him with a valid smog certificate, which is mandatory with any car sale in California. My nephew was happy! But then the car lost power as he was driving home, and when he took it to the DMV to register it, he learned that the seller had rolled back the digital odometer 100,000 miles, so it actually had 245,000 miles. Also? The smog certificate was fake. It would not smog; it needed not one but two new catalytic converters and a host of other repairs. He spent a lot of money on this car that he now (understandably) detests. He hopes good might come out of this rotten situation if my daughter can drive it safely up in Tahoe.

We were going to pick the car up in the morning. Except when I talked with my sister the other night to finalize details, she mentioned something about the car’s clutch.

Excuse me?

The car has a clutch? Meaning it does not have an automatic transmission? Meaning that you have three pedals that you have to work to make the car run and not just a brake and a gas pedal? Meaning that your left foot actually has to do something while you are driving? My daughter unfortunately does not know how to drive a manual transmission. And this is not something that one can learn overnight, especially on a day when an atmospheric river of rain has settled over the area.

Problem not solved.

Because the AWD car that we already own? The Honda CRV that is pictured above? It had acted up a little the last time I drove it. It seemed like it was misfiring. I wasn’t sure that it would be safe for her to drive, especially all the way up to Tahoe by herself in inclement weather. I planned to troubleshoot this dilemma when I had more time.

Except we were out of time.

So after that conversation with my sister, my daughter and I put on our raingear and headed out into the atmospheric river. We added oil to the engine, because I thought that occasionally engine misfires are cause by low engine oil, and then hopped in and drove. We drove up the freeway to the next exit, then back home, then on the backroad, then back home. For a good half hour.

The car seemed fine.

But I wasn’t convinced.

She left in the morning, driving our old car to Tahoe. We joked that she could use our AAA tow plan as a last resort, since they will tow your car 100 miles if need be. At least she would make it up to the resort, even if the car died a few miles after she left. And then we could have it towed the next day back to a mechanic! Thankfully, all was well. She made it to Tahoe safely and moved into her apartment. But every moment of that day, I worried. So many things! About the car. About the weather. Would the storm hold off long enough for her to arrive safely? And why had I never let her practice driving in the snow? I can tell you exactly why: because I wanted to keep her safe. Big parenting mistake, that one.

Tonight, I am grateful.  Grateful that the car made it, that she was able to do a little grocery shopping in South Lake Tahoe before heading to her new apartment, that she got most of her belongings unpacked before the snow started. When I checked my “Find My” app and saw that she had arrived, the relief was palpable. This is apparently a part of parenting, even when our children are in their 20’s, especially if you are an overly protective parent who never let them drive in bad weather.

Now that she has arrived safely? I finally have bandwidth to think about other things. She still is planning to buy my nephew’s car; she wants to learn how to drive a manual transmission. And since I learned to drive that way (my Dad was patient with nerves of steel), I can drive the Forester in snowy weather until she feels comfortable with it. But I am tired. I am tired tonight, and though I know that worrying never helps anything, I am prone to it. For now, I am going to do my best to take the night off from worrying about anything else: about cars or snow or traffic. Or the election. Especially the election.