In the early 1980s, whenever we shared the family sedan, my siblings and I jostled for space in the back seat. If one of us stretches a thigh or a shoulder beyond our allotment, accusations will fly.
Once, to escape, I climbed over the edge of the back seat. I pressed my fingers against the cold glass of the back window and watched the highway spool away. Hanging in this cozy compartment, I was blissfully unaware that, in a collision, I could have been thrown from the entire car and into the windshield.
My parents would have reasoned that I was safe back there, with my father at the helm. Before you rush to judgment, let’s remember that those were heady days. Seatbelts were not required in California until 1986, and airbags were not federally mandated until 1998.
Back then, hardly anyone was strapped into the back seat, so we could treat it like a jungle gym. However, anyone passing by would be surprised to see me so close to the edge of the back window.
I must have seen the flashing lights and heard the sirens of the California Highway Patrol cars. After being pulled over, my father told the officer: “She must have been hiding there. I haven’t seen her. “
In my memory, he was not nervous or shaken. If anything, he and the officer seemed to be in on the joke: Children! what do you do Even the whole family got into the joke and acted innocent. Nothing to see here! I don’t know if the officer believed us, but he let us off with just a warning.
The event became part of our family lore, a stark contrast to what I knew about my parents’ upbringing in China: a wartime childhood, on the front of invading Japanese forces and later from the Communists. Their families fled to Taiwan, and eventually my parents received graduate fellowships that brought them to the United States.
After a lucrative engineering internship, paid in mighty American dollars, my father bought a used Ford Custom, trimmed in bulbs and chrome. During his courtship with my mother in the early 1960s, he drove hundreds of miles between Iowa City and Chicago to visit her. On their honeymoon, they drove to Niagara Falls in New York: 500 miles. For winter break, they took their firstborn, my older sister, to Disney World in Florida: about 1,200 miles.
When my parents began their lives together, interstate highways were beginning to criss-cross the country, and long stretches of flat, smooth road seemed as limitless as their future. Why fly when you can start and stop as you please?
Our family joins millions of Americans who take road trips celebrating their freedom and independence. Long before the advent of GPS, my father charted our routes with the help of a clumsy AAA map, our journey traced with a highlighter.
Before smartphones and tablets, we couldn’t retreat into our screens. To keep us entertained, I read aloud joke books checked out from the library. My parents, who worked long hours, cherished our time together in a way that I couldn’t understand until later.
Among our various gas-guzzling sedans are the lime-green Buick LeSabre and the boxy gray Cadillac DeVille. When my father hit the brakes, the chassis would lurch forward.
From our home in the hills east of Berkeley, every weekday morning my father drove my mother, a scientist, to a government research facility in Albany before heading to downtown San Francisco. Traffic was a breeze in those days.
When his engineering firm sent him to Saudi Arabia for a long-term gig, my parents debated whether our family could manage without him—if my mother, who doesn’t drive, could take BART to work, or if They can get groceries delivered. In our neighborhood. And if there is an emergency?
My father eventually taught my mother and her three children how to drive. I still remember one of his warnings: “Don’t accelerate on a down slope!” He also showed me how to avoid being boxed in by cars breaking the speed limit, a phenomenon he called the “wolf pack”. When I went to college, about an hour away from home, he highlighted the route on the map.
His legacy: I drive like him — confident, practiced, prepared. I can parallel park on the highest hill in San Francisco.
If my parents went on a scenic drive, they had a preferred route along the water: first across the great gray workhorse of the Bay Bridge, through San Francisco, over the Golden Gate Bridge and back to the East Bay. Richmond-San Rafael, past the remains of a sunken ship.
My parents – is my family – worth more than the scenery: the deal Three bridges, one toll.
Decades later, my husband and I took a similar trip in reverse with our twin sons.
In Sausalito, we met friends at a children’s museum where they splashed in a fountain, climbed a pirate ship and played drums. Afterwards, we glided over the Golden Gate, marveling at the glistening whitecaps of the Pacific to our right, sailboats dotting the bay to our left. We paid another toll and found ourselves at Golden Gate Park, taking our boys to the playground. Then we went home by the Bay Bridge, while they slept.
For babies, back seat naps are the sweetest of sleeps, sending them back into the womb, murmuring against the white noise of engines, the gentle movement of cars and the protection of their parents.
When my mother asked where we went that day, she excitedly said, “Three bridges, one toll!”
When I admitted that we had overpaid twice instead of once, I could tell she was a little disappointed – and despite the amazing day, I was too.
More and more, my mother’s world has been engulfed first by epidemics and now by the ailments of old age. Although she is no longer behind the wheel, she is always ready for a drive.
Around Thanksgiving last year, the traffic was light, and my sister took her on her favorite ride. The joy seemed as pure as the one she had taken all those years ago when she climbed into the passenger seat next to my father: three bridges, one toll.
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