Of all the fears I write about in On Becoming Fearless, none strikes closer to home -- figuratively and literally -- than the fear of doing a lousy job as a parent. After all, there is no love more intense than the love we have for our children. And where you find intense love, you're sure to find intense fear lurking just beneath the surface.
I often think that as soon as the baby comes out, doctors replace the amniotic fluid with a potent cocktail of guilt -- shaken and stirred with more than a splash of fear.
And that fear is there every step of the way: from the first worries about taking care of your newborn (is my milk enough to sustain them?), to the fear as they take their initial tumbles as a toddler, to the angst of leaving them behind on their first day of kindergarten, to the thousand and one anxieties that come with the arrival of the teen years, as we see our kids (especially our daughters) dealing with so many of the same classic fears we all dealt with during that turbulent phase of our own lives -- Am I pretty enough? Am I popular? Will boys like me?
But none of these prepared me for the feeling of unmitigated dread that came over me when I contemplated the prospect of my little babies -- now teenage girls -- sliding behind the wheel of a car, ready to, in the words of Steppenwolf, head out on the highway.
You see, I've memorized the hard, cold statistics: car crashes are the #1 cause of death among teenagers in America -- with nearly ten 16 to 19-year-olds dying in auto accidents every day. And teen drivers account for 14 percent of all auto fatalities, even though they comprise less than seven percent of American motorists. I also can't forget that nearly 80 percent of all fatal crashes involving 16-year-old drivers are the result of operator error.
Talk about fear. It makes "friends with benefits" pale into insignificance.
I thought I'd dodged a bullet when my oldest daughter, now 17, told me she wasn't in any rush to get her license -- preferring to avoid the stress of dealing with the well-documented hassles of LA traffic, and choosing instead to deal with the stress of being driven by me (a lousier driver would be hard to find).
Then my 15-year-old recently plopped down on the couch next to me and said that she'd been thinking about what kind of car she wanted to get as soon as she gets her driver's license on her next birthday.
Once my heart slowly slid back down from my throat, and I'd decided it wasn't realistic to keep her locked in her room until her junior year of college (a 20-year-old driver is five times less likely to be involved in a fatal car crash than a 16-year-old driver), I told her that as co-founder of the Detroit Project, a committed environmentalist, and the supremely satisfied owner of two Toyota Priuses, I thought she should follow in my footsteps and get a hybrid.
"No, mommy," she told me. "I want a Volvo."
At first I didn't know what to make of this. Was she acting out of nostalgia (our first family car had been a Volvo)? Was she expressing her rebellion by turning her back on my gas-sipping car of choice? Had she considered the new Volvo ad campaign -- Who Would You Give a Volvo To? -- and answered, "Myself!"?
When I asked her the reason for her first car wish, she looked at me like I was asking why she thinks Daniel Radcliffe is cute. "Because it would make me feel safer."
Well, duh...
Because it would make her feel safer. How utterly level-headed. Now I'm not saying that when she turns 16 I'm going to be able to watch Isabella walk out the door, hop in her new car, and drive off without feeling a knot in the pit of my stomach. As I said, fear for the well-being of your kids comes with the motherhood gig. But it sure will make it a little easier knowing that it's a safety-minded, 16 year-old pragmatist sliding behind the wheel, and not the second coming of Danica Patrick.