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" &amp;quot;I gave birth in our backseat&amp;quot; By Amy Brill Predawn light, silvery blue, flooded through the windows of our Subaru Impreza. I remember the flash of stoplights as my husband blew through them, saying, &amp;quot;Hold on, you two!&amp;quot; I thought he meant it metaphorically, as in, &amp;quot;Everything will be okay.&amp;quot; He actually meant it literally, as in, &amp;quot;Hold on to something. I will not be stopping at any of these red lights.&amp;quot; But I couldn&amp;#039;t, because I was holding on to our baby, who had just been born. In the car. I was only seven hours into labor when we&amp;#039;d stumbled out the door. Our first baby had taken an exhausting day and a half to arrive, but this time my labor sped up and intensified drastically in just 20 minutes. We were running out of time, but I never could have guessed we had less than five minutes. I was wedged into a space the size of a dinner plate, between the toddler car seat and the base of the infant seat. Not an ideal spot for delivering a baby. Deliver isn&amp;#039;t the right word for what happened in our Subaru anyway; catch is more accurate. There was no pushing, no cheerleading, nobody waiting, gloves extended like a catcher on home plate for this tiny person to emerge. There was the hum of the engine, the whoosh of the heater. We rounded the corner. My contraction peaked, and I felt a warm rush of immense pressure. I put my hands down just in time to feel the baby&amp;#039;s head pop out. A moment later, her body slipped into my hands. I shoved my shirt aside, raised her to my chest, and pulled my jacket over us. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re okay,&amp;quot; I said, over and over, staring down at her tiny face in a state of blissful shock. My husband, who deserves the biggest medal in creation for keeping his eyes on the road, asked all the important questions: Is the nose clear? Is the baby breathing? Are you okay? Is it warm enough? At least, that&amp;#039;s what I think he was asking. Her infant bleat was loud and steady, her body perfect and warm and strong. I leaned back, grateful for the cradle of that tiny wedge of space, just enough to contain us. A minute or two later, the car slowed, then stopped. My husband rushed into and out of the ER. The staff rolled out with a gurney and a warm blanket, and I exchanged one set of wheels for another, the most precious cargo I have ever transported tucked safely in my arms. Amy Brill&amp;#039;s first novel, The Movement of Stars, will be published in April.  &amp;quot;My daughter came out to me on the 405&amp;quot; By Julie Tilsner When my kids were small, I knew that the time they&amp;#039;d reveal their innermost hearts to me was usually the 10 minutes between being tucked into bed at night and slumber. In these intimate moments, they&amp;#039;d confide their secret hopes or greatest fears. Now they&amp;#039;re teenagers. These days they do most of their revealing in the car. Welcome to a surprising upside of the chauffeuring years of parenthood. My kids are too young to drive themselves around Los Angeles, but old enough to have busy lives, so I find myself spending long hours with one or both of them. Driving them to Emily&amp;#039;s. To Ian&amp;#039;s. To GameStop. To the beach party--40 minutes there and back. It&amp;#039;s a lot of time in traffic, but a lot of conversation time, too. Often, the topics are small: minutiae of their days at school, friend politics. They can also be doozies. Big, life defining stuff. I knew something was up not long ago. &amp;quot;I really like this girl in history class,&amp;quot; my daughter said, looking sideways at me. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s just so pretty...&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Cool,&amp;quot; I replied. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s she look like?&amp;quot; A few weeks later I got, &amp;quot;Mom? Have you ever, like, you know... kissed a girl?&amp;quot; Eyes still on the road. &amp;quot;Of course. Even straight girls kiss other girls in college...&amp;quot; I laughed to kill the tension, and she didn&amp;#039;t say anything further. So I suppose I wasn&amp;#039;t taken completely by surprise when, driving home from marching band practice, my 14-year-old daughter announced to me that she was a lesbian. &amp;quot;Okay,&amp;quot; I said. Eyes on road. Let her finish, I thought. We turned onto our street. &amp;quot;Can you keep driving?&amp;quot; she asked. &amp;quot;Yes ma&amp;#039;am,&amp;quot; I said, making a right and heading back toward the freeway. Safe on the 405, I let her talk. I affirmed. I accepted. I embraced. I suspect she was hoping I&amp;#039;d be a bit more scandalized. The truth is, I don&amp;#039;t care. Of course I want her to choose worthy partners. I want her to be happy. In our circles, one&amp;#039;s sexual orientation is often his or her least noteworthy trait. But that&amp;#039;s in our urban, multicultural community. I pointed out that there are many people who will be deeply uncomfortable with her orientation, and some will react with hostility. I realized that her coming out to me was just the start of a very long, very open-ended conversation. But there are a lot of miles to drive in L.A. For now, I&amp;#039;m grateful to be trapped in the car with my teenager. Julie Tilsner is the author of Mommy Yoga and the blog Bad Home Cooking.  &amp;quot;I really met my boyfriend&amp;quot;  By Nichole Bernier The summer I turned 30, I took a gamble, picking up and moving to a new city with a guy I barely knew in a car I could barely drive. This was more than a little out of character for me. I don&amp;#039;t make aggressive investments. I don&amp;#039;t even wear two patterns at a time, or buy a novel unless it&amp;#039;s been recommended by someone I trust. It started with a blind date. He drove to New York from Boston one Friday night to take me to dinner, and one long-distance date led to another until, after three months of high phone bills and even higher mileage, we agreed someone needed to move. I flipped a coin--mostly for the humor value of it, because we both knew who was packing up and who wasn&amp;#039;t. My career as a writer was far more portable than his 10 years in Boston politics. On moving day, he drove up in his brand-spanking-new soft-top Jeep Sahara, to caravan with me in the U-Haul that we had crammed with all my earthly possessions. He took the wheel of the truck and I, who hadn&amp;#039;t owned a car in years, followed in the Jeep. The four-hour drive was like one of those montage scenes in a romantic comedy: googly eyes in the rearview mirror, stopping to gas up our vehicles in tandem. When I rolled through the tolls, the man in the booth would say, &amp;quot;The guy in the truck up there just paid for yours.&amp;quot; Then, at the final toll, there was a line. Idling behind him, fiddling with who knows what, I got careless with the brake pedal. I rolled his shiny 10-day-old Jeep into the back of the U-Haul, smashing up its grill. No more googly eyes in the rearview mirror. He didn&amp;#039;t yell, but since we hadn&amp;#039;t had a big first fight yet, I couldn&amp;#039;t tell what, exactly, he was feeling. Fury? Regret? For the rest of the day we moved around one another carefully, and I tried not to wonder what I&amp;#039;d just done. I&amp;#039;d given up my writing job, my rent-controlled apartment, and my city to be with someone who was essentially an outline to me, a story that had not yet been fleshed out. Curbside at the end of the day, he surveyed the damage to the Jeep one more time. &amp;quot;Things are just things,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;People are people.&amp;quot; His restraint that day contained all the things I couldn&amp;#039;t yet know about him, but it also marked the moment I knew that no matter what we&amp;#039;d given up, there was more to be had together. Fifteen years later, things are still just things compared to the people we love--including the five small ones that now fill our minivan. Nichole Bernier is the author of the novel The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.  &amp;quot;What I drove on the road to adulthood&amp;quot; By Jami Attenberg  Jami Attenberg In 2005, with great gusto and optimism, I bought a 1993 Honda Accord station wagon in a parking lot in downtown Seattle from a woman I met on Craigslist. I was 34 years old, and spending the summer in that city crashing in a friend&amp;#039;s guest room, revising my second novel, the advance from which was paying for the car. I bought the car so I could drive cross-country and take book tours, and also so I could visit my newborn niece more frequently. New books, new babies: The future was mine. I did not know it then, but it would the last time I had any sort of financial security, and thus the last time I would be able to buy something of any substance for myself. Our economy tanked, and with it, my book advances. &amp;quot;Worse comes to worst, I can live in my car,&amp;quot; I have thought more than once. Money came and went\u2014jobs and men, too. It feels like I&amp;#039;ve lived a million lives since that first summer. But through it all, that car has been my rock. I&amp;#039;ve wended my way cross-country ten times. I&amp;#039;ve slept in my car in a national park alongside the Colorado River, and driven (very slowly) through a blizzard in Wyoming past jackknifed trucks, feeling very much like I was witnessing the end of the world. I, perhaps ill-advisedly, made out with a man in the back with the seats pushed down, after a Fourth of July celebration in upstate New York. I&amp;#039;ve visited every state in the contiguous U.S. I&amp;#039;ve seen the mountains, the oceans, and the forests of this great country. I&amp;#039;ve picked sage by the side of the road in the desert, the scent of it warming my car for hundreds of miles afterward. I&amp;#039;ve gotten lost, I&amp;#039;ve asked for directions, and I&amp;#039;ve raised my hands in triumph when I&amp;#039;ve finally found my destination. I loved this car, and it loved me back. It gave me a platform to have amazing adventures. But it&amp;#039;s also been my giving tree. It&amp;#039;s been hit a half dozen times, and been towed thrice. Flat tires, dead batteries, a driver&amp;#039;s side window that refuses to close entirely, so that after inclement weather a musty smell lingers. Right now the front window is cracked, the car stereo face no longer stays connected, and there&amp;#039;s a front light that needs fixing. Plus, the way that engine rattles should be illegal. (And probably is.) Now all that&amp;#039;s left is a tin can on wheels. There&amp;#039;s no less love in my heart for it, but I wouldn&amp;#039;t trust it to get me to New Jersey, let alone the Colorado River. And yet: Another book advance has surfaced, and there&amp;#039;s just enough in there to buy a new used car. I buy it now, as a woman in my forties, with perhaps less gusto than before, but with just as much optimism. I might not drive through a snowstorm anymore, but that&amp;#039;s just because I&amp;#039;ve learned my lesson. But I look forward to taking a few more wrong turns\u2014and right ones\u2014with my new car. Jami Attenberg is the author of The Middlesteins.  &amp;quot;I learned responsibility&amp;quot;  By Sloane Crosley The year most of my high school friends and I got our driver&amp;#039;s permits, the coolest thing one could do was stand outside after school and twirl one&amp;#039;s car keys like a lifeguard whistle. That jingling sound meant freedom and power. And, as we all know by now, with great power comes great responsibility. My first car was pretty much the embodiment of responsibility. Originally purchased by my grandmother, it was an &amp;#039;88 Toyota Camry, beige to the core. Nothing said &amp;quot;Get me from point A to point B while under the speed limit&amp;quot; quite as much as that car. And so the Camry that was supposed to be the ticket to my freedom actually made me the sober designated driver on many raucous occasions. As much as I complained, the beige beast was teaching me something: that my friends and I were each other&amp;#039;s lifeguards, we were accountable for each other. If I was mad at my best friend or lusting after a guy, all of it faded as I yelled at my tipsy cargo to stop hanging out the window. I could be mad tomorrow. Tonight I yelled, because these people were my responsibility. On the occasions when it was me dangling out of a friend&amp;#039;s backseat? I remember being viciously cursed at to get back inside and thinking, Now, this is love. Sloane Crosley is the author of How Did You Get This Number. 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