Be safe

This post has been on my mind for weeks, since some point on my last driving trip. I've composed it repeatedly in my head and last week even sat down to write it...but didn't. Tonight I realized to my dismay that what stopped me was superstition - it should wait until this summer's last trip is done about three weeks from now. Why?

1. It would be embarrassing if some disaster should happen on my trip to Maine and back after I had written a hubris-filled post justifying my decision to take these trips.

2. It might jinx the trip.

They're both the same reason in a way, and either way you put it they're baloney, so here goes.

The sentiment I've heard most often from some of you as I prepare to start one of these trips, or as I pull away from your home after you were kind enough to provide a stopover on the trip, is "Be safe," "Be careful," or in one or two cases "Aren't you afraid?"

Well, no, I'm not afraid, though I thank you for wishing me a safe trip as much as if you'd wished me an enjoyable one. The reasons are complicated and work for me. They may not work for you, and that's okay.

Item: I'm not a physically brave person, as many of you know, but as I began to escape from the awfulness of adolescence half a century ago I decided that my bitterest regrets came from not taking the risk of doing something worthwhile, not from trying and failing. Since that moment I've tried not to be hobbled by fear of failure. My execution of this plan has been mixed, but I'll save that discussion for some other time and place.

Item: I'm 66 and see danger, especially the danger of dying, very differently than I did when I was young. As many of you know, part of the bond between Rachel and me when we first met, at ages 31 and 55, was that her health history gave her much the same comfort with her mortality that my age gave me with mine.

Item: I often wonder, as I thank you for wishing me well, what danger is implicit in your words. Driving is riskier than flying or taking the bus or train, as we often read. I try to stay awake on the highway. I'm cautious when driving conditions stink, as you've read repeatedly in this blog. I don't pick up hitchhikers, though I saw several in rest areas in the West who seemed inoffensive and deserving. I try to be prudent about expressing my feminist, gay-accepting, immigrant-accepting, Muslim-accepting, sometimes lefty views in certain areas of the U.S.

In fact, the only times I've felt that I was in any danger on either of my first two trips were when I made a stupid driving error or the road conditions got very bad.

So on my next trip, and the ones that follow, I will be safe. I will certainly be careful. And it doesn't frighten me to be taking the trip. If an unforeseeable disaster should happen, as is possible on "blue highways" and even, rarely, on the Interstate, I hope my last thought isn't of fear or regret but of joy that these trips allowed me to see you and so much of the world that I had never seen before.