I Stole My Dad's Car at Thirteen. He Never Found Out. And Other Things I'm Still Carrying.
On illness, inheritance, and the strange synchronicity of becoming your parent's age If you've ever looked up and realized you're living a story that started long before you did, this one's for you.
When I was thirteen years old, just one year older than my daughter is now, I stole my dad’s 1967 convertible Cougar and took it for a joy ride around the neighborhood.
A brazen attempt at being older. I looked like I was eleven. So I have absolutely no idea why I thought this would work. Did I genuinely think my neighbors wouldn’t notice a little blonde middle schooler slumped down in the driver’s seat of a vintage convertible the size of a boat?
I got to a dead end and had to make a three point turn.
One turn. Back up. One more turn. Back up. One more... crunch.
I hit someone’s mailbox.
I got out of there fast, drove home, somehow parked the boat back in the garage, and waited to see if anyone noticed.
He did.
Not because of the banged up headlight. He assumed that happened in his work parking lot, which I still don’t entirely understand. Maybe he was letting me off the hook. What actually caught me was the New Kids on the Block keychain I left in the driver’s seat.
He confronted me. I burst into tears and claimed I knew he hated me now. He didn’t overreact. I was in trouble, but he was calm about it.
He grounded me for the weekend.
And then he took me to Burger King for hamburgers, french fries, and vanilla milkshakes.
Instead of a rigid punishment, we just spent time together. Talking about life and philosophy, something my dad always insisted we do, dipping fries into vanilla shakes like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The Synchronicity
I’m 49 now. My son is leaving for college. My daughter is almost thirteen.
And recently, on a walk, it hit me: I am almost the exact same age my father was when he was diagnosed with lymphoma.
That diagnosis started a ten year journey that ended with his death at 58.
Sitting at Burger King with him, something in his bones must have known. That he should loosen up about the car, about the mailbox, about all of it, and just be with me. That this was his time with me and he shouldn’t waste it being rigid.
My dad’s illness looked a lot like a midlife crisis from the outside. He bought the Cougar. He bought a bunch of furniture so he could write a book. He started to retreat from the family. Reading, writing, searching, pontificating on the meaning of life, musing about art and religion and the human experience as he quietly worked his way toward the end.
I understand now why he bought all that furniture. Why he wanted to write a book. He never did. Because he didn’t feel good.
He felt lonely.
I understand that now more than I’d like to.
The Night Side of Life
I’ve been sick for 31 years. Since college, age eighteen, the same age my son is now. A slow burn of illness that wound its way through my body and became my daily companion.
I wake up most mornings around five thirty. Immediately, before I’m even fully conscious, a wave of anxiety creeps in. I close my eyes and breathe.
The thoughts come fast. You forgot to renew your driver’s license. Did he buy his prom ticket? Is her homework done? Am I a bad mom? Will we still have health insurance? Is my lymph system working? Am I going to be diagnosed with lymphoma at the same age my dad was?
Breathe. Begin again.
Susan Sontag wrote that illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. That everyone born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.
I read other people’s words to lift me out of the loneliness of my aching body. Because illness is lonely in a way that’s hard to explain to people who haven’t lived inside it.
I spend most of my days convincing myself I can get through this one. Just this one. And then I can sleep.
I know it makes people uncomfortable when I say this may be my path. “Don’t talk it into existence,” they say. But holding two thoughts at once comforts me. This life is imperfect. Impermanence is the only real rule. I can know that and still keep going.
What I Know
Each decade I grow sicker. And also more resilient. More myself. Closer to the me, the I, the self that has been quietly forming underneath all of it.
I hope my children will read my work one day, the way I read my dad’s when I want to feel close to him. That’s part of why I write it.
The only thing I can get myself to do right now is create. I feel me calling me. I don’t know if the urgency I feel is time passing faster than I’d like, but I don’t question it anymore. I just know to keep going. Keep creating. Keep individuating, toward myself, toward whatever comes next.
Double down on courage. Keep making the thing.
That’s all I’ve got. And somehow it’s enough.
P.S. My dad died never knowing I was the one who knocked out his headlight. I whispered the confession to him after he was gone, standing beside his body, the words barely audible even to myself. I’m not sure he heard me from wherever he is. But karmically, I feel the scales balancing as my own children surely pull their silent pranks on me. Some cosmic ledger somewhere has marked this debt as settled.
My Current Obsessions A little treat for making it to the end.
📖 Reading: 🎧 Conversations With God by Neil Donald Walsch
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