I just got back from clearing my possessions out of my car and turning it over to the salvage people. One last search in the glove department and under seats, chasing stray quarters and personal items. One last time to sit in it and appreciate it. I know it is – was – just a car.
Still, I am unutterably sad.
Back in June, my newly-minted teenage driver had an accident
in said car. It was stupid, as all
accidents are. It involved undrivable
weather conditions, ignored parental warnings, a strong desire for freedom, a
dash of thrill, and a heaping helping of the innocence and arrogance of
youth. Of course, it also involved cars,
another driver, air bags, police, frantic phone calls, court dates, repair
shops, insurance claims, and, ultimately, a salvage yard.
Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful it was not worse. My kid and her illicit, unapproved passenger are okay (calling her passenger’s
parent to tell them of the accident and do the appropriate things was an
out-of-body bad experience I do not wish to repeat), the other driver is okay, our insurance will cover the damage to his car, it is not my only car, and we will
probably be able to replace it to some degree with some other vehicle.
But, it is so much more than the loss of a car.
I am confronted with my child’s strong will and how easily
she threw over her shoulder all of the cautions I have given (and even how easily
she disobeyed a couple of rules). I
thought she was more mature; I thought she knew better. Do I not know her? Do I trust too much? I feel let down, victimized, guilty, angry,
and sad. Mostly sad. Things are not the same since the morning of
that accident. We will rebuild trust, but we will still have *this* behind us. Ugh.
I miss what the car represented. We had such a happy time shopping for it – it
was a car my hubby and I bought for me.
It was luxurious – more so than any other vehicle I have ever owned. I
did not think I deserved a car that nice, but I was secretly pleased with how
it looked, how it ran, how I felt when I was in it. That car was an assurance of times that were
okay financially, it was a happy harbinger of good family events to come, it
bespoke a certain achievement – status, if you will -- that took us a long time to achieve. We felt like such adults when we bought that
car. It was fun to drive and own. We went EVERYWHERE in that car. The family came together in that car to do
good stuff, fun stuff, and just the generally necessary stuff a family
does. It held us comfortably, with room
for all of the trappings we needed. That
car hauled face paint to charity events, countless kids to music and sports
events, friends to wineries and fireworks displays, paper mache cows to
Tennessee, sun-burned bodies home from the beach, my dad's ashes to their final resting place in Arlington Cemetery, and so much more.
So, I will sign over the title and get a check. I will find another car we will fit in, we
will make do with, we will run our lives out of.
But, it won’t be that car.
