There She Goes

Our youngest daughter got her driver's license a couple of days ago. It was the goal of her summer and she reached it right before school starts tomorrow. I snapped some pictures of her first solo drive, as I did (I think) of her sisters when they took the wheel by themselves.

Though it's not easy to instruct, to ride shotgun, clamping down on that imaginary brake, grabbing the seat cushions on the sly, so your child doesn't know how terrified you actually are — how much harder it is to let her drive off on her own, into noise and weather and traffic and tricky left turns that she, and only she, will have to navigate.

It is a measure of trust, one of many we give our children as they grow. We believe in them, of course we do. But that doesn't make it any easier.