One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to buy a new (or more specifically a ‘new-to-me’) car…

I haven’t bought a car since 1997 and at that time I knew exactly what I wanted. I was in college and, yes, I wanted a station wagon. I remember the car salesman being surprised that he couldn’t sell me a smaller, more sporty coupe. Oh, no, this Oregon living, Dave Matthews listening, serial mover, sorority girl wanted a red station wagon. And so, after haggling over the price I got my little round-bottomed Ford, Escort station wagon.

This car has been with me through so much!.

Her first long drive was from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington, where 1 week after we started our journey together, a small rock jumped up from the freeway and put a small crack in her shiny windshield. The crack remains there, in the upper left corner these 9 years later.

She was packed full of my belongings 4 times over the next 2 years, helping me settle into a new dorm, back to the sorority, then into an on-campus apartment named Haseldorf, and finally into an off-campus apartment in Salem, Oregon.

After graduating, she carried me to San Francisco, where she carted me around for 4 years, her bumpers collecting numerous, little dents and scratches from city parking and a ridiculous amount of parking tickets for being in the wrong place at the wrong time ~ twice actually being incarcerated for her vagrancy (otherwise know as ‘being towed’). During her first year as a San Francisco automobile, she was badly beaten ~ her rear, driver’s side window being smashed in for no apparent reason except to grab some chump change from the ashtray. She drove around the city sporting a plastic bag to cover up the hole before my oldest brother replaced her window as a surprise. Then, three years later, she was mugged again, this time getting out unharmed except for her stereo being viciously ripped from her console.

During her time in San Francisco, she spent a lot of time parked on the steep hills, sometimes facing up the hill, sometimes facing down. On weekends, she often made a 2 hour drive to visit Lockeford, California, whre she would relax in the country.

She then journeyed to Los Angeles, again filled to the brim with belongings and now a pet cat. She finally started to lose her life a little, needing some time in the repair shop, twice or three times. She gained many more dents and scratches. The first one was on a fateful night in March 2004, where a girl backed up into her outside a bar in the San Fernando Valley. Then, due to my inability to judge distance without my glasses at night, her right hip was squished as I turned the corner into my gargage on my way home from the grocery store. Her most recent mishap happened on the Friday before Halloween, when her too-tired-to-be-driving owner bumped into a Taxi cab, causing a teenie bit of yellow paint to become inbedded in her front bumper, but otherwise causing no damage.

These days, she sits in traffic and travels various freeways, her radio coming in and out, most of her speakers filled with static, her inside light broken, and always with a faint, damp odor.

She’s been a faithful friend, never eating too much gas and keeping me safe; warm with her powerful heater, and cool with her powerful air conditioner. She’s driven back and forth between Southern and Northern California for holidays and visits and her carpets are filled with little black cat hairs from the rides Marceau has taken underneath the driver’s seat.

Today she has around 92,000 miles and she’s still humming (albeit much more loudly)…and while I could keep her running, I’m ready to let her retire. I’ve loved her and she will always be remembered as the car that carried me through my young adulthood.

She’ll still be around for awhile longer while I take my time in deciding how she will be replaced, but isn’t it funny how we develop an emotional attachment to an inanimate object? I feel bad for wanting a new car…like she’s going to be sad. A car, sad. Now that’s just silly.

I guess the truth is that it makes me sad ~ because it feel like it’s the end of something, the end of a long chapter in my life.

It’s like the end of an Act, just before the intermission, when the young heroine is resigned to letting go of an impossible love and has decided move ahead with her life, although she knows that the passion of her first love will always be embedded deep within her heart.