This is not the photo of a tragedy, but our Doug and Lisa in 1963, riding in the back seat of our '61 Chevy impala en route to our cabin in Vermont.RIDING IN THE BACK SEAT
I’m riding in the back seat, but no one is driving the car. How is it there has been no fatal impact? Other vehicles scream by; fences bend as they barely avoid being hit; trees blow aside in panic; people fly about like cartoon characters. I’m glued to the right rear seat. No matter how hard I struggle I can’t make my arm reach far enough to push down on the brake in the front. In fact, I can’t move it at all. Nor can I move my body into the front seat to take over the steering wheel and apply the brake. I save myself by waking up.
As bad as it is losing control of the car, it’s even worse on other occasions when I see it from outside bursting into bright red flames. I save myself by waking up.
I did wake up. Those dreams are emotion-free memories now, as are those of octagonal rooms filled with ancient debris. Over time I cleaned them out and created a bright, white, sun-lit, fragrantly airy space for myself. Even the dreams of a royal octagonal table standing atop long legs under which is rushing a brown, fetid stream are gone. The water was purified. The dream was no longer needed.
Most of us, I believe, have ridden in the back seat of a driverless car, eventually recovering to take over the direction of our own lives. Some of us have endured the passionate, fiery explosion of the vehicle that carries us through life. Many of us, I think, have discovered the bright new parts of ourselves after cleaning out the old, untended debris in our hidden rooms, or removed the personal pollution that contaminates our life energy.
What I plan to say, however, is much less dreamlike. Besides being a psychologist who dreams, I am in many ways a walking history book. Some of you may find some glimmers of your own history in the stories I tell here. For now, let’s get back to riding in the back seat.
My first back-seat memory probably occurred when I was about 8 years old, or maybe I was 4. The fact is, memory is extremely fragile. Maybe it didn’t happen at all, and probably it didn’t happen the way I think. My father was, of course, driving, and we had been someplace fun. I assume there was an older sibling in the front passenger seat. In fact, both my big brother and my big sister might have been sitting in front, because there was room for three grown-ups in that seat before the drive shaft raised a bump in the middle.
I’m willing to bet that my friend Hallie was in the back with me, because most of the time fun things were shared with her. I was kneeling on the back seat, looking out the rear window when my father had to stop quickly and I was thrown back against the front seat. I knew my back was broken. Fortunately what we “know” is often wrong, as it was then. But I recall being very worried – I think we all were – about getting home and telling my mother what had happened.
Kneeling in the back seat? No seat belts? How could my father have allowed such careless behavior?! I was about four (or maybe eight) years old, remember? Some twenty-or-so years later, in 1956, I was involved as a Graduate Assistant in a weekend working retreat at Osgood Hill. At lunch at the retreat I sat next to a man who had done research on those relatively new car safety aids -- seat belts that fastened across the lap. He was convinced by the data that they saved lives. The general public was still pretty resistant. But he convinced me.
Still, in March, 1958, in a blizzard, as Lou drove me home from the hospital with our newborn Douglas wrapped up in my arms, there was no thought of a secure seat for him. I’m pretty sure no one yet had thoughts of marketing such a protective contraption for newborns. On later trips, though, we did enjoy the convenience of Doug’s car bed, which hung precariously behind us, slung over the front seat by a couple of hangers. (By the way, his crib at home wouldn’t meet today’s required narrow space between slats.) As Doug developed enough to sit up by himself, I remember driving with him sitting next to me in his car seat – just that, a little seat hanging by a couple of hooks over the back of the front seat. Some twenty-two months later, Lisa inherited those comforts.
Lisa remembers seeing, when she was older, seat belts hanging in our garage, to be installed if we chose to do it. Somehow, we did have seatbelts in our ’61 Chevy Impala. They can be seen in the cover photo of those two patient travelers putting up with the long trip to Vermont. They learned early on that the best way to put up with such tedium was to play for a while with the toys that were currently in favor, and then drop off to sleep.
It’s probably clear by now that riding in the car is my metaphor of choice for the joys, hazards, and responsibilities of varying degrees of control over our/my life’s direction. I hope you’ll experience little bolts of memory as you read my snippets. I’ve chosen to make them little fragments so you can pick and choose as you make your way through them. Besides, to be honest, that’s the way they come back to me in the middle of the night – or even while I’m driving/riding in the car.
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