farewell, old friend.

on loving and losing an old car.

Over Thanksgiving our station wagon was diagnosed with a terminal illness. We detected a leak in the head gasket, which is a fix far too expensive to tackle on a car with an underbelly ready to give out from rust. New England isn’t kind to old cars, and this one spent her life in a Connecticut beach town getting double her dose of salt. I’m disproportionately sad and so despite the fact that being inconsolable about the impending death of an old car is a truly absurd thing to admit to, here I am. Love’s like that, I guess.

As a kid, I sat in the way-back of my parents’ navy blue Plymouth Voyager. My seat was on the left-hand side of the long upholstered bench. My sister Cait sat next to me. My sisters Laura and Devan sat on the bench in front of us. In the rear seats of those minivans, an armrest of sorts was positioned above the wheelhouse. It was not a soft arm rest of the sort you might be used to. It was a molded plastic landing spot that could be used, in a pinch, for an elbow. On long car rides to visit cousins in Toronto I’d stuff my bed pillow on top, and try to nap. But what the arm rest lacked in comfort, it made up for in storage. It had a little lid that could be lifted and in addition to fossilized french fries and the gummy, putrid remains of McDonald’s milk-carton drippings, inside you could stash treasures. I used it to keep a small spiral-bound notebook.