Driving with Nancy: How a raccoon helped me through an avalanche of anxiety

Nancy the raccoon soothing our new kitten.

I used to drive with a raccoon belted into the middle of my pick-up truck seat. One day when a co-worker jumped in to cover a breaking news assignment, I waited with embarrassment as he took in the odd seatmate I forgot to move. But he just smiled like it was perfectly normal to have a plush toy next to him and said, “Oh, good. Mr. Racoon has his seatbelt on.”

That was cool.

Twenty years later, his response still makes me smile. And I was thinking of that raccoon this winter because the pummeling storms we’re getting in California reminded me of Rocky, the first car raccoon in my family.

My mother started the raccoon tradition in 1983 when she bought a used Honda station wagon, which she was only able to afford because it had been salvaged from a mudslide in Santa Cruz County earlier that year. Mostly the car still ran OK, except for an electrical short that could suddenly kill the engine and strand us anywhere, at any time. But about 15 minutes after dying on the freeway, it would start up again like nothing happened.

Soon after my mother got the car, she found a large toy raccoon stuck in the mud while out birding. She took it home for a good scrubbing, named it Rocky after the main character in a Beatles song, then put him back in her car so the two flood survivors could keep each other company.

 

And yes, that was cool, too. Even teen me thought so.

I got my own car raccoon many years later from a friend who bought the super soft toy in a surge of pregnancy hormones. Since it reminded me of my mother’s raccoon, I named it Nancy, the girl Rocky fancied in the song, but wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.

 

Until I moved to Washington State, where I found myself battling a new and near-crippling anxiety on my commute. Driving has always stirred deep dread for me, but my years in Seattle created an avalanche of fears — 9/11, the return of my husband and roads covered in snow — that nearly buried me.

 

It’s crazy I tried driving at all, really, given that my mother was killed in a car crash right before I started Driver’s Ed in high school. I nearly passed out in class after the first “Hamburger Highway” film, which was full of real and faked crash footage meant to show teens how dangerous driving can be. When I finally worked up the courage to tell my teacher how vividly I had already learned that lesson, the gruff coach softened and let me sit in the library for the rest of the graphic films.

 

And while I was very nervous behind the wheel at first, like most teens I soon fell in love with the freedom and control driving gave me. And for nearly 20 years, my mother’s crash seemed to only make me a far more cautious driver than nearly everyone I knew. 

 

Until Sept. 11, 2001. Before that day, I was voraciously exploring my new city, even happily driving hours with friends to the coast to go clamming or into the mountains to go skiing. But after 9/11, I not only didn't want to drive, I didn't want to leave my house for anything but work and food.

I remember watching a plane fly into a New York City skyscraper from my futon couch 3,000 miles away and feeling all the scaffolding I built after my mother’s crash tumble down with the buildings on the screen, which reminded me that my life could shatter again at any moment.

And the anxiety only intensified when my husband joined me in Seattle soon after, because then I had two people to worry about never coming home again whenever they drove away.

 

Then the anxiety became an avalanche when I got a new job with a very long and complicated commute: 90 minutes, with half of that on water. It seems crazy that I even considered trying that commute, but the job was finally a full-time reporter position at a newspaper, so I never considered not trying it.

 

I loved the work immediately, and though I was losing money every month paying the ferry fares at first, I even came to love that commute. After braving city traffic to reach the dock, I was free to read the paper, drink coffee and eat breakfast, or just watch the water and the mountains gliding past. I still smile thinking of those relaxing journeys, especially the cat naps I took on the commute home, which were crazy cool.

 

Then came the snow. After one morning when I couldn’t reach the ferry dock because the roads were ice rinks, I obsessively read the weather forecast before my drives for any sign of white precipitation, carefully noting when the temperature would drop below freezing.

But no forecast is perfect, as we all learned one Monday night: My husband was watching the football game held in Seattle, realizing as the announcers remarked on the “unexpected snowstorm” turning the city white that, “Oh, crap — Justine is driving home in this!”

Well, almost home. I white-knuckled the drive through downtown and into our neighborhood, but only managed to fish-tail about halfway up the last hill before pulling over in a panic and walking to ask my husband to finish the drive.

After that night, we put concrete blocks into the back of the truck for stability, and I put Nancy in the cab next to me for support, since she reminded me of Rocky, and Rocky reminded me of my mother.

And Nancy was a great help. Not just with the snow, but for the times I worked too late to take the ferry home and had to drive around the water at night, crossing a busy bridge and braving hectic Tacoma traffic on the mammoth I-5, which was the exact opposite of taking a peaceful nap on the placid waters of the Puget Sound.

But whenever I got anxious, I’d give Nancy a pat, and feel my mother patting my leg, the soothing touch she’d give me whenever I sucked in my breath while she was driving. And Nancy and I, we always made it home safe.