Why am I writing an on-the-road book when I don't have a driver's license, much less own a car? I'm so used to traveling as I do that I didn't anticipate this question.
I was once as obsessed as anybody else with driving as a symbol of independence. I signed up for a driver's ed course in my senior year of school though I had no car or access to one. I wasn't looking so much to be a driver as to symbolize the difference between mother's life and mine. She was a passive passenger, so a driver's license would begin my escape. In the words of so many daughters who don't yet know that a female fate is not a fault, I told myself: I'm not going to be anything like my mother. When I was in college and read Virginia Woolf's revoluntary demand for "a room of one's own," I silently added, and a car.
But by the time I came home from India, communal travel had come to seem natural to me. I had learned that being isolated in a car was not always or even usually the most rewarding way to travel: I would miss talking to fellow travelers and looking out the window. How could I enjoy getting there when I couldn't pay attention? ...
But the truth is, I didn't decide on not driving. It decided on me. Now when I'm asked with condescension why I don't drive — and I am still asked — I just say: Because adventure starts the moment I leave my door.
