Johnny Goes to College

I am about to travel cross-country in a fully loaded station wagon with my ex-husband. We are taking our only child to college in Colorado, where he will be starting his first year, and we are doing this as a family.

We are not the winners of our neighborhood’s competition for the best divorce, but we’re on the same page when it comes to parenting. Our son, Johnny, has chosen the route from Minneapolis to Fort Collins; he’d like us to cut through South Dakota rather than make the mind-numbing drive across Nebraska. Johnny, who has little highway driving time under his belt, will not be doing much of it.

Have I mentioned that my ex-husband doesn’t drive? Have I mentioned that my ex-husband is a rock star, in the literal sense? This means that he has successfully made a living as a professional rebel. We’re not yet out of Minnesota the first time he lights up in the back seat. Rebels don’t ask.

I am not a militant nonsmoker. I’m a loosely disciplined ex-smoker. That said, no one has ever smoked in my car. Every nerve in my body turns to the old rage, the white-hot indignation. Johnny, in the passenger seat, stiffens. My inner dialogue reminds me to choose my battles, as we are only 90 minutes into a 16-hour drive. Sensing the change in energy, Johnny drops his earbuds and asks me a question. I say, “Apparently it’s 1968 in the back seat.”

But the smoker, I realize, is sad and stressed — like me — and apart from fumes that plant me back in my own childhood, the drive is far more pleasant than I’d imagined. When I am not replaying Johnny’s childhood — the Tigger phase, the Thomas the Tank Engine phase, the superhero phase, the Playmobil phase — the three of us are sharing meals, having laughs, checking out Mount Rushmore, and it feels O.K. Bittersweet, to be sure, but O.K.

Once we arrive in Fort Collins we are thankfully distracted by a list of things we must do in a short period of time: We pick up a mostly unnecessary parcel of goods from Bed Bath & Beyond, and are left no options but to park far, far away from the designated unloading zone. Numbly, we move bags and boxes of clothes, linens, toiletries and school supplies into a cramped, dumpy cinder-block 1970s dorm room. I slip a box of condoms into Johnny’s underwear drawer, fretting and sweating as I feel the inevitable creeping up.