The Drive.

Since becoming a full-fledged adult, with an important job downtown that involves an office with a view in a remodeled historic district, which requires an elevator to access, I’ve discovered the five o’clock rush hour commute is a strange and magical period of metamorphosis and self-honesty.

I get into my Jeep Liberty, the pink car seat in the back still empty, and I head west on Washington. The cars are bumper to bumper, as the up and coming suit kids from downtown head home to suburbia. We drive past the beautiful west central houses, some restored to their original beauty, which we have abandoned with our hipster early 20’s, and drive due west to the 04 zip code. The established side of town. Where houses all look the same, built by the same contractor, the lawns look the same, and everyone knows about IRAs and stocks and bonds and other fancy grownup terms like colonoscopies.

But we haven’t picked up the kids yet. We haven’t gone home to spouses, to pick up the house and cook dinner (or pick up takeout). Right now, we’re on a 15-minute period of total honesty. No kids, no office where we’re required to keep up this insane charade of adulthood. Just us, in our cars. The windows are rolled down. The iPods are switched to our music that we don’t dare play with our precious snowflake children in the car, played at a volume we wouldn’t dream of blasting into precious little eardrums.

And for 15 minutes, in our tiny little pods, driving down Washington Boulevard to the safety of suburbia, we are ourselves.

The lady in the Caravan two cars ahead? Followed Nirvana on tour and held vigil after Kurt Cobain’s suicide, before she became an accountant. That guy over there in the Mercedes? Smoked more weed than you could imagine in his heyday. He might have a baggie in his sock drawer that he breaks out after the kids have gone to sleep, after swim practice and lacrosse games.

And the girl in the Jeep Liberty, blasting the Strokes and drumming furiously on her steering wheel? Was once thrown out of three different bars in one night and arrested for peeing in a Taco Bell drive-thru. Before the expensive but modest dress slacks and high heels and portfolios and vendor phone calls. Before the pink princess EVERYTHING and swim lessons and gymnastics lessons and “for-the-love-of-fucking-god-I-said-it-is-bedtime” eruptions. She was pretty fucking sweet.

We all know this is each other’s Zen time. This is Me Time. I am not How To, Official Grown-Up With An Office Full of Family Pictures and Important-Looking Folders. I’m not Mommy. I’m just How2. Crazy, sarcastic, ridiculous, falling down drunk, dancing on tables, drumming along to the Killers How2.

We recognize it in each other. With a polite nod or sidewise glance, a sheepish smile that says, “Yeah, I was really fucking awesome about 6 or 7 years ago, too,” we see kindred spirits, we see ourselves reflected as the ties are loosened and the heels come off. Sometimes literally – traipsing around the office in 4” heels wears on the arches.

Then we pick up our kids. We go home. We feed them dinner, put them to bed, quietly settle onto the couch with a glass of wine, watching mundane prime time sitcoms and going to bed at 10, because that’s when we’re exhausted now, to wake up at 6 to do it all again, the same tired act of adulthood for 9 hours a day.

But we’ll reconvene again at 5. I’ll bring the Black Keys.