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Opinion

Johnny Goes to College

Credit...Manon Debaye

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.

The incoming freshmen have a packed schedule, and my ex and I are dismissed for the evening to our respective hotel rooms. We will all come together in the morning for breakfast — and goodbyes. I wander around Fort Collins, trying to imagine which places Johnny and his new friends will haunt, when I come upon a recreational marijuana dispensary. I haven’t indulged in over 20 years, yet I find myself signing in at the reception counter and then waiting on a stylish leather couch for a personal shopper to call my name and take me to the land of legalized weed. The décor is Wild West saloon meets apothecary. I am not even close to being the oldest customer.

I casually ask my super-mellow personal shopper, Nathan, about the gummy bears I’ve heard so much about. “Ahhh, edibles,” he nods, and guides me to a section crammed with cookies and candies. I buy a canister of the lowest dose of sour gummy bears and leave. That night, I order room service and watch TV, praying for sleep. I don’t touch the gummies.

At 7:30 the next morning, I get a text from Johnny saying that he has a mandatory meeting at 9 a.m. and can we all meet for breakfast immediately? At IHOP he orders pancakes slathered in whipped cream and strawberries. This kid is clearly too young to be on his own.

We head back to the dorm. Double-parking, we step out of the car, and Johnny hugs and kisses his dad, then embraces me in a strong, strapping-young-man hug, burying his head in my neck; this is the exact position we found ourselves in while I walked the floors with him in my arms during his colicky phase, and as he did then, he is crying into my neck.

This shocks me. I haven’t seen him cry like this since I told him that his father and I were separating. I had imagined I might say, “Ta ta for now,” Tigger’s optimistic sign-off, but I can manage only, “I love you, sweet baby.” Reeling back to the car after he walks into his new life, I turn to my ex and say, “That was a lot harder than I thought it would be.” I plant my forehead on the steering wheel. I sob.

Not for long, though. I need to zip my ex to the Denver airport; he will fly back to Minneapolis and I will pick up my father, who is flying in from Detroit to drive home with me. I compose myself, and my ex turns to me and says, “Want a smoke?”

“Sure,” I say.

At the airport, my ex and my dad cross paths, and my dad embraces him in what I am sure is an unwelcome hug. My dad then walks straight to the driver side of my Subaru and says, “Move over, Hon, I’m driving.”

No argument. Emotionally spent, I retire to the back seat. I eat my first gummy around noon, and by 2 p.m. my dad and I are singing show tunes from my dad’s playlist, the songs we’ve always sung together. Shortly thereafter, I demand that he pull off and drive through Taco John’s, and as night falls I request Dairy Queen. The gummies have blunted the rawness and given me wicked munchies. Being his oldest and most challenging child, I’ve shared my gummy-eating indiscretion with my dad; at this point, there is nothing I could do that would shock him, except perhaps entering a convent. My dad insists on driving all night. I lie down in the back, look out the window and chime in to songs from “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “The Music Man” and “West Side Story.”

I am 6, I am 16, I am 54, and I feel completely safe. My dad has disappointed me on many levels throughout the years; like all of us, he is a flawed and wounded human being. But on one of the most emotionally wrenching nights of my adult life, I get to relive something I thought would survive only in my memory: I get to have my dad drive me cross-country while I languish in the back seat singing along and watching the night sky. He is, once again, heroic in my eyes. At 6 a.m., we pull into Minneapolis, and I begin the confusing, uncomfortable process of settling into the empty nest.

Laurie Lindeen is the author of the memoir “Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story.”

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section SR, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: My Ex, Our Son and The Drive to College. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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