She arrived unexpectedly last Friday, just like my son did years ago — don’t they always. But she is everything I wanted, and more — just like my son was. And in fact, my now-grown son was actually there with me at the dealership for the delivery.  

     Introducing my new Cadillac 2024 CT5 Premium Luxury, with a V-6 dual-turbo charged engine, in Raven Black with Sahara Beige interior! She is beautiful, if I say so myself.  I have named her “Sassy,” because she is smart and fast, just like me and just like I need her to be going forward. Of course, given all the new technology in cars since 2011, there is a significant learning curve for me to measure up to her smartness, but I’m getting there. A couple technology lessons at the dealership, a quick read through the owner’s manual (yes, thank goodness, they still provide one), and some fiddling around with settings and dashboard buttons while idling in my driveway are gradually getting me up to speed on information. Some inaugural drives up on open country roads are going to get me literally up to speed (but not this weekend with all the eclipse traffic here where I live).  

     Anyway, it’s good, it’s exciting, it’s necessary, it’s time. As one ages, it becomes not so much  about the age at which you need to quit driving, but rather about the time at which you have to recognize any physical and/or emotional limitations that impede safety. Any limitations at any age, of course, result in a waning of driver confidence behind the wheel and that makes any reasonable person afraid.. For example, I have friends who will no longer drive after dark because of limited peripheral vision or eye disease; friends who don’t drive on freeways because of heavy traffic and hesitant defensive-driving responses; others who won’t drive on  inter-states because they are intimidated by big trucks and high speeds, especially in bad weather. Those living in or near a big city or in a big state like Texas, where public transportation is virtually nonexistent, end up becoming daylight prisoners of their immediate neighborhoods or simply homebound altogether. 

     Yes, years of driving experience count, but self-confidence makes, and has always made, the difference between a good, able driver and a poor, timid one. I’ll admit that I am an aggressive driver, but when you live in place where other drivers are also aggressive, you need to be able to hold your own. And a big part of confidence, for me at least, is an automobile that drives the way I drive and one that I can absolutely trust through any and all driving condition. “Sista” did that for me, taking me through fracking country passing 18 wheelers, through floods and hurricanes and dust storms, in winds and fog and mud rain, over ice and hoar frost and even snow. Whatever it was, whatever the urgency that forced me to be behind the wheel at all, I knew I could count on her. “Sista” saved my life more than once.

     These days, the incredible navigation, communication and safety technology built into new automobiles should inspire even more confidence in the driver, as long as the driver learns how to properly manage it all.  It’s early yet in our relationship, but already I have a good feeling about “Sassy.” I hope she will prove as unfailingly steady and trustworthy as “Sista” was. As someone who lost her young father in a fatal car accident on the highway to Houston when she was six years old, I am keenly aware that my life, and the lives of those with me and around me, depend on it.