In Which Owl, Kanga and Christopher Robin Discuss Driving

As the moments I can take for myself have dwindled since J's birth, I find that the meaning of certain moments, and the meaning of certain environments, has changed.

Driving is a good example of this. Before I was married, driving anywhere either meant I was visiting the three-hours-away boyfriend (that didn't last long, despite a night of falling stars and the glorious Southern Cross) or, later, headed over the west hills to my boyfriend-now-husband's apartment.

After we married, driving became a time of possibility for us. Just as we always seemed to hold our dreamiest and most optimistic conversations at the same tiny restaurant overlooking the Pacific Ocean year after year, we also held our most challenging and frightening conversations as we teetered on the edge of parenthood, driving through the Rogue River Valley in the spring.

When I began working as a librarian at the design consultancy, driving represented responsibility and opportunity. Swinging my Honda into the arts and restaurant district every day meant I was somehow allowed to be there; no one had uncovered me as the obvious uncool fraud I was, and I could enjoy one more day of being paid by a fascinating juggernaut of a firm.

When I was pregnant with J, morning and afternoon drives were time for togetherness with her. Literally cuddled up against me -- within me! -- she listened to classical music until I broke down and punched the button over to alternative and punk, singing along when I knew the words. I rubbed what I thought might be her head and told her about the family she would one day meet.

Since J's birth, driving without her means freedom. I hop in the car, crank the radio louder than it should be and merge into traffic. When I am alone, my destinations are only threefold: the gym, work or the grocery. But in those moments I get a little of myself back. The button for the classical station gathers dust.

And, lately, driving means pride. I go to work to earn our single paycheck (which is not to take away from my husband's amazingly speedy success with consulting...but I have the insurance) and feel at the end of each day that I am one step closer to understanding what it means to support a family. My job is meaningful, challenging and pleasurable to me -- but more than that, it is now something I do for the only other two people who matter.

All that, from a little four-door sedan and the open road.