I've only ever driven one other car in my life, and that one wasn't really mine. This was My Car. Lots of memories...
-went on a date with Timm the first night I had it. He put coins in all the useless, single-coin slots along the side of the gear shift. And he tried out the horn- honking it randomly as we drove down Route 4 at night, scaring other drivers (and embarrassing me)...
-the way the air conditioner smelled. Not a bad smell, just distinctively VW...
-the locks would freeze over in the wintertime and I wouldn't be able to get my key in and I'd constantly be late for class, frantically trying to thaw them out...
-dumpster diving and cramming it full of all the stuff I picked up from the curb working on my thesis in Fine Art...
-having it get broken into (probably because of all the aforementioned junk drawing attention to it) and the police tracking me down in the studio at DAAP because they caught the guy and wanted to give me all the stuff they confiscated from him (none of it mine, but they forced the bag full of loose change upon me- seriously. I told them I was missing maybe fifty cents and they gave me the whole bag. probably around $5). Just the other day I came across a nugget of glass from the window he smashed to get in...
-telling Bob I was pregnant and Timm and I were getting married and he'd probably need to find new roommates...
-bringing Iris home from the hospital...
-driving Iris around for hours, trying to get her to fall asleep...
-8 months pregnant and trying to figure out how to cram another car seat in there...
-the longest drive of my life: being in active labor, racing to the hospital, agonizing over every tiny bump in the road...
-bringing Asher home from the hospital...
-one of the first times we attempted to leave the house with all 4 of us, Asher was about a week old and Iris had clogged up bathtub drain so we were going to drive over to Mom and Dad's for a little excursion and to shower. It was raining, I was hormonal, and the car wouldn't start...
-taking the kids with me to the mechanic's today to retrieve all my things and telling Iris that we wouldn't be bringing Mommy's car home anymore because it was broken. Heartbroken, she cried and through her tears said, "I'll miss that car." After she had a chance to cry a bit and dry her tears, she told me that today her favorite color is green, like Mommy's car.
So much of my life happened while I owned this car.
It's almost a time capsule on wheels.
Between losing this car and my hard drive crashing, I feel like I'm losing a limb. Maybe two limbs- the car is maybe a pinky toe (with an annoying in-grown toenail and fungus problems), and the hard drive is more like an entire arm. One is a bittersweet blessing, the other... well, it's a bit more difficult to move on from.
I am really excited about moving forward and finding a great used minivan for our family to make new memories with. I feel so completely blessed and unworthy of the generosity of my family who is making this possible. It is just really difficult to say goodbye to a thing, even though it is JUST a thing, that has driven me through so much.
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