Today I got a new car. This is super exciting for me, of course it is. But despite my excitement, I'm a little sad. My old car holds a lot of memories for me. Trey says that you still have the memories without the object, and while that's true, I can't help but mourn the loss of my first car a little.
I mean, it WAS my first car. Well, unless you count the old van I had for a month before it broke down. Which I don't. For many people, their first car is their first taste of real freedom. That car took me to my graduation. It drove me across the country (crying) with my dad when I moved to Alabama for the internship I did after high school. It drove me to Utah, a place I'd never lived and didn't think of as home despite my parents having moved there, when I was done with that internship. And it carried me back to Alabama once more, this time with my mom and all my belongings, when I decided to marry a southern boy.
That car took us on our honeymoon, to my first trip to Disney World and to North Carolina and back again when we made a move that taught us a heap of hard lessons. And it carried us on our last drive as "two" to the hospital, and our first drive home as a family of three.
It has absorbed countless meltdowns, both as a teenager and a young adult, when my car was the only place I felt I could cry. It has barely contained my energy on chilly nights when I would roll down the windows and sing at the top of my lungs. It has astounded my senses by somehow fitting more than seemed possible of my STUFF on several moves.
It has exasperated me when I had to work my butt off to pay for it, when it always seemed to get flat tires when I was alone with no one to help, and in the end when it seemed to throw problem after problem at me.
I didn't fully realize what it meant to me until I started typing this. And it may seem silly to feel so many emotions about a car. But sometimes, when I was lost, that car was the only thing that felt like home. And sometimes I think we need to acknowledge our feelings and be sentimental.
So hopefully I, and my family, will create such special memories and moments in this next car. And hopefully I can wave goodbye to those old memories and take another step down the highway of my life.
