I’m supposed to go and pick up our new car today---the first new car I’ve ever had. And I’m in deep, deep despair.
We’re trading in my Subaru...and I don’t want to leave it.
It doesn’t help that I’m a little hung over right now. It doesn’t help that the song “Tuesday’s Gone” is playing.
But the idea of parking it the dealership lot, getting in the new car and then driving away with the Subaru in the rearview...tears, you guys. Seriously. It had me up in the middle of the night. I thought, I can’t drive the Subaru to the farm. I can’t do it. And yet, I must. It has to be me. The difficulty I am having with this task troubles me. It’s a car, not Old fucking Yeller.
I’ve been driving it for about 10 years. My sister Becky bought it when I started watching Molly because the car I was driving at the time wasn’t the picture of child safety. So for a while it was just the Molly-mobile---Bec’s extra car that I drove solely when schlepping Mol around. Then I moved to NYC and when I came back about a year later, Bec and I worked out an arrangement (since I had gotten rid of my own car before heading to New York) that I’d watch Mol again and she’d pay me a little less for nannying and I could have the car. (No small generosity on Bec’s part.) It’s been a good car. All-wheel drive. A friend. It’s a green wagon with dents and dings all over it now. A massive hailstorm a few years back that devastated the inventory of car dealerships in the area, left about thirty golf ball-sized dimples all over the hood. I loved the character that hail gave the car and never wanted to fix it.
Dan and I agreed I should drive it around these last couple of days----have a proper goodbye and all. It reminds me of when my mom walked our dog, Charlie, up to the school playground for a visit when I was out for recess in fourth grade. I didn’t know it was the last I’d see of Charlie (who was a bit of a biter and probably shouldn’t have been around a schoolyard full of kids). The Subaru didn’t pass inspection and is emitting a deep muffler-related growl. It shakes too and is probably unsafe for long distances. I wanted to put in the $2500 that it needed to pass inspection. (My real goal was to hit 200,000 miles and become part of the Subaru High-Mileage Club. This is a thing. We’re at 179K.) But it’s a 1999 and Dan is ready for a newer car---specifically one that does not have a tape deck. He also feels like the $2500 repairs are adding up and that it’s just time to put the car down. He’s right. Still, I would have hung on to it...
This was the car in which I drove my mom to chemo and we listened to 50’s music and sang along. This was the car in which I waited in the school pick-up line for Mol. Once, Dan velcroed bags of chips and packages of Oreos and peanut butter crackers all over the soft fabric of the Subaru's ceiling so that Molly and I could ceremoniously choose our after-school snack each day and then just reach up and pull it down. Another time, I came home to find L-O-L-A in small silver letters stuck to the car’s bumper.
The guys at the dealership mentioned this when they looked at the car for its trade-in value. We joked that it was the Lola Edition.
I’d probably hang on to it if we weren’t renting an apartment and had a proper yard to park it in for the next 20 years. That car is Molly as a nugget. When she dropped food in the backseat I told her it was okay because there were all sorts of animals who lived under my seats and they’d eat whatever she dropped. “You’re feeding the animals, Mol.” After that I always found so much food down there.
That car is my mom. She was in the passenger seat when she got the phone call that a scan showed that the cancer had not spread to her brain. She’d grabbed my shoulder---I was so scared I almost drove off the road---and then wept tears of relief.
That car is Lola. A twenty-something child of living parents. That car is a relic from another world that no longer exists.
Even the smallest changes feel that big right now. I know it’s not rational. I know we’re fortunate to be able to get a new car and I know I will be excited once the pain of this goodbye has passed. But I feel particularly brittle as I realize just how sensitive I am right now to losses of any kind. I can’t help but wonder if everything will always feel this hard.
Off I go now. Our final drive. For the past three years the Subaru has been a tear-catcher. A loyal friend (with a tape player). RIP, Lola.
