In the Passenger Seat

I don’t drive, never have; and so for the last 37 years or so, at least since my parents divorced, I’ve spent the bulk of my car time in the front at the right; except for that month Mary spent driving us all over New Zealand, where they drive on the other side of the road, and the so-called “death seat” is on the left, and the hillside roads are fast and narrow, and Rowan, who had just turned one, would invariably wake up in the middle of all this locked in his carseat and quickly work himself into frenzy.