My son was never into toy cars, not even when he was a little kid. I always thought all kids liked stuff they could throw or move around, so it was kind of strange to me. He had this massive collection of fancy toy cars that he got as hand-me-downs, but they just vanished as he got older—he’d let his friends take them, or they’d grab them without asking. Instead, he was all about dominos, and the only vehicle he really liked was a domino truck. It always fascinates me to see how kids have their own preferences when it comes to play.
*
My main fear has always been the same—
the fear of driving.
That’s why I never owned a car,
neither at home nor in exile,
until I turned forty.
They say that midlife brings change—
and it does.
But some things
remain unchanged.
Fear.
*
The only thing I had with wheels in the city was my son’s stroller. We lived in a place with good public transport, so owning a car didn’t make much sense since we wouldn’t have anywhere to park it. Our stroller was portable and foldable enough to fit anywhere. My son loved it, too. He would sit there comfortably and check everything out as we rushed through our busy days and weekends, whether walking, taking the bus, or the subway. That stroller was a lifesaver for getting around the concrete jungle.
*
One day, in the middle of all the usual city buzz, someone came into our building and stole our stroller. I think our downstairs neighbor must have left the door unlocked like she often does, and just like that, our only way to get around was gone. Feeling pretty bad about it, she ended up buying us a new stroller. The whole theft and getting a new one happened so fast that I didn’t even get to thank her properly. Meanwhile, I had this odd dream. It wasn’t about someone breaking into her place, which could’ve happened. Instead, I dreamt about the stroller getting wedged between the subway doors, and the train took off before I could save the stroller. Or the toddler. Nobody warned me that being a mom was just a bundle of anxiety on wheels.
*
The pace of change in this city matched the wild shifts in the country’s politics. One day we were all set to join the European Union, and the next, we were dealing with an internal war—though nobody was ready to call it that. Then, just a day later, there was an attempted military coup. By the fourth day, the soldiers were everywhere guarding their cub—the nation, more specifically, the President.
*
I could no longer lower the top of my son’s stroller into sleeping mode when we were outside. I had to keep it open so that the officers with guns could see I wasn’t hiding any threats inside. I realized that the stroller, which once protected my son from traffic, people, and noise, no longer served that purpose. We faced a new threat: the sight of guns usually held in the hands of the two rows of soldiers on either side of the street or in a subway alley.
*
We left the country like thieves, fleeing a crime scene on an early morning flight. We stole three citizens—us—from a nation that had stolen our lives. Our exile is a double-edged crime.
*
When we got to the U.S., we figured my son didn’t need a stroller anymore. We were out in the countryside and felt safe, so we thought it made sense to ditch it. That was really all we cared about in those first few months.
*
We were staying in temporary housing on campus, and my residency office was there, too. They mentioned that my son could attend a school just a mile away. It was different for us since we’d never lived anywhere where everything was so close you could walk to it. This little bus came by every now and then, so we could use that for public transport. We were good at getting around without a car since we had been doing it for a while.
*
The wildlife seemed the only thing that seemed like a real threat on campus. There was this deer family that just kept multiplying, and we kept running into a gaggle of geese that were extremely protective of their goslings, often blocking our path to my office or the cafeteria. One time, we even had a close encounter with a fox. There was also this owl that could mimic all kinds of animal sounds. We’d see woodchucks hanging around outside while mice had taken over inside.
The music librarian sometimes led bird-watching tours for visitors. The animals seemed to have settled in and became more like quirky entertainers than actual threats. The real danger, however, was so tiny that you couldn’t even see it. We regretted leaving our stroller back in Turkey because now we had to inspect our child carefully every time we returned from what seemed like a harmless walk. Ticks have become a new threat in our new country.
*
Towards the end of summer, I thought mixing some culture with nature would be all right. There was a summer theater festival in a nearby town and a bus that made stops in some pretty random places to pick people up and drop them off. It took me a bit to figure out where the “natural” stops were, but once I did, I went to catch my first show there, which I think was a play by Mamet.
It was a matinee, and I hopped on the bus back home after the play. I thought I had been dropped off close to home, but it was hard to tell where I was with only trees around. I checked my phone for directions, but there was no reception.
Although it wasn’t too late in the evening, darkness descended too quickly. I assumed the lane of trees must have been thicker in this part of the forest. Suddenly, I noticed a strange reflection on my phone screen that looked like feet. When I looked up, I was startled to see a line of vultures staring back at me. I had only seen them in cartoons until then. Their beaks looked like bullets, and their feathers had the pattern of a feed strip for a machine gun.
*
Driving still seemed scarier than a family of vultures eyeballing me.
*
We got my son a shopping wagon and turned it into a makeshift school bus since no bus service was available. After weeks of walking through ticks and rain, we decided to invest in a wagon. We made a few tweaks to turn it into an outdoorsy dirt wagon, adding a half-rainproof tent that looked much like the canopy on his old stroller. He loved the rides to and from school. At his age, he didn’t quite notice the stares from his friends and their families because of his new wheels. Personally, I felt a strong resentment towards a life that forced everyone to operate on separate wheels.
*
The title of this piece could have been “The School Wagon versus Subarus.”
*
I postponed the driving lessons.
*
Winter rolled in, and the old man cleared the snow off the shortcut path to my son’s school. He’d also taken care of a tree that had fallen due to age and a storm blocking the way. He warned us to watch out because he spotted a bear that hadn’t hibernated yet since it was caring for its cub.
After I dropped my son off at school, I rushed back home. On the way, I left the wagon on the porch of this old, abandoned building, planning to grab it later when I picked him up. My feet were freezing, so I soaked them in warm water in the tub. Then I played “Zombie” by The Cranberries and let myself have a good cry for a while. It was the first one since we left our country.
*
It is hard to be a wild animal when a young one is present.
*
I headed back to the school, watching my surroundings since the mother bear was out and about. I stopped by the porch where I had left the school wagon, but it was gone. My son and I had to trail back home. I never thought a little theft could momentarily ease my homesickness.
It suddenly dawned on me that I needed to start taking driving lessons. I lost my first driving instructor in a car accident decades ago. I needed to prepare myself for a life on wheels, which I hoped would bring safety to our lives even if it didn’t offer the same comfort to my heart. The hardest part is accepting that we are leaving behind an unwheeled life we once called home.
Burcu Seyben is an asylee academic, playwright, director, and writer of creative non-fiction from Türkiye. Since 2017 Seyben has been rebuilding her life and writing in the US. Her creative non-fiction has appeared in The RavensPerch, Door is a Jar Literary Magazine, and Synkroniciti.
