Archive for category: Grumples

When I was 19, my parents decided the car I’d been driving around my college town was about to break down (as I’d found myself alone on the dark highway with a dead vehicle on several occasions), and they wanted to buy me a new one. I’d been paying for most of my college expenses on my own, including tuition, and their offer of a car was such a wonderful gift. We searched and searched for the perfect “college car.” We test drove every Jeep I could get my hands on, a few Camry’s, and even a Honda or two. But in the end, we found a great deal on an almost-new Chevy Blazer. It had two doors, POWER WINDOWS (I was so excited about the freakin’ power windows), and a CD player. I was in heaven.

I drove that car for years and years. Even when bits and pieces of it started to be recalled, and Chevy discontinued the model entirely, I loved that car. I named her Daisy, because I was a girl and I was in college, and shut up I don’t care what you think! I took her on road trips to Florida and Tennessee and Colorado and Texas. I burned several little holes in the upholstery with my disgusting smoking habit. One time, when the battery had to be replaced, I drove around with the old battery in the back for weeks before I realized it had tipped over and spilled acid everywhere. Let’s say that was the end of the nice upholstery.

My brother once backed in to it when he was high at my parents’ house, and we had to have the bumper completely replaced. I backed in to a giant tree at the dog park in Lawrence and completely smashed out the rear window. That car had been through some drama.

But good times too. It was the car of Trent and I’s first dates, kisses, trysts that I won’t mention here because, um, ew. One time, while drunk tailgating at a Royals game way back when we were young and fun, Trent decided he needed to brand my car with his love.

Yeah, permanent marker…that never came off.

So when I traded that lovely car in for a brand spanking new vehicle last Friday, I started to shed some tears. I told Trent to take a picture of me with the car, quick, before I lost it. I’m not good at saying goodbye.

Lu just put her head on my shoulder, one hand holding a red balloon that the salesman had given her, the other hand placed on my cheek, whispering in my ear, “You’re fine, Mama. You’re fine. It’s okay.”

Endings make me so sad, sometimes it’s hard for me to realize an ending is really a beginning. Stuff is just that. Stuff.

And it doesn’t hurt that the new car has satellite radio.