I’m sitting in the front passenger seat of my father’s green Peugeot. It’s a Sunday morning, and we are returning from taking our dogs to training.

My father puts his foot down on the accelerator, and we whistle along the highway. It’s a lazy Johannesburg day.

I close my eyes and feel the warmth of the sunshine on my face. Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer spills out of the radio.

“I am just a poor boy though my story’s seldom told…I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises…”

My 8-year-old ears are convinced the duo sing a “pocketful of marbles, such are promises”.

It doesn’t quite make sense, but I think I know what they mean. There’s nothing as promising as a pocketful of marbles.

I live to play marbles. I have goons, puries, and ironies. I may be just a poor boy, but I am rich in marbles.

The slobbering dogs, Zardoz and Delta, snore gently on the back seat.

We’ve just stopped at a corner café and bought vinegar-soaked slap chips wrapped in newspaper.

I savour the knowledge that when I get home, a long school-less Sunday stretches out ahead of me.

Decades later, when I smell vinegar or hear The Boxer or see a slobbery dog, I’m taken straight back to the passenger seat in my father’s green Peugeot, where I felt safe and truly carefree.

It’s a memory I search for in times of distress.

As a child, my parents provided me with comfort. As I grew up, I discovered that there were many things that made me uncomfortable and there was no one to provide comfort for me. I had to provide my own comfort.

This can be difficult because I now know what’s coming. Global warming, road rage, bills, lives cut short by illnesses, natural disasters, crime and conflict.

I also discovered in the worst possible way that dogs don’t live forever.

“Do one thing every day that scares you,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. Fair enough, but I like to do one thing every day that comforts me.

There’s a time for taking risks and stepping outside your comfort zone. But as I get older, I realise there are also times to step inside it.

I was comfortable in the passenger seat of my father’s green Peugeot because I didn’t yet know there were things to be afraid of.

I know there are things to be afraid of now, but I choose to make myself comfortable anyway.

So I seek out silence – that’s my comfort zone. First thing in the morning, just me, a cup of coffee, a rusk and a crossword puzzle before anyone else wakes up.

The world is still. There are no tweet notifications (other than from actual birds), no cellphones buzzing, no demands. Just clues that need decoding and coffee that needs drinking.

I watch the sky shift from pitch-black to not-quite-pitch-black as the sun starts to peek through the darkness.

It’s the second closest I get as an adult to being back in that passenger seat of my father’s green Peugeot.

The closest?

The driver’s seat.

We’re in a white Suzuki. Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me on Spotify has replaced The Boxer on the cassette tape, and Zoom and Pickles snore gently on the back seat.

I look at my passengers, half asleep, some of them slobbering and snoring gently (and not only the dogs). They don’t have a worry in the world.

I am at my most comfortable when my children are at theirs. I realise that as an adult, comfort isn’t something you get.

It’s something you get to give.