The Cars We Insured

For the full essay, see it in Fall 2013 issue of The Wellesley Review.
Originally published in December 2013.

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Me “driving” in July 1989.

When, as an infant, I refused nap, my mom would often strap me into the car seat and drive head-on into the afternoon sun on Route 128. While I slept and the tree-smeared highway of suburban Massachusetts blurred into a green ribbon, my mom listened to music or reviewed her to-do list in her head or simply breathed in the silence of time. Perhaps it was the soothing lull of the car and the peaceful calm of these rides, absorbed through impressionable infant brain waves, which established my love of driving. Or maybe it goes deeper than that. It seems that motor oil runs in my veins, and that my heart beats by internal combustion, firing on eight cylinders.