GOODBYE OLD FRIEND

What I Learned When We Got Rid of Our Old Car

Sometimes something represents more than the thing, but it’s still a thing

I felt like a king driving home from the hospital in our minivan in December 2010. An official adult with real responsibilities. A dad with a wife and a kid. I’d just been a guy when we’d driven there a few days earlier. Now I was a father.

It had snowed while we were there and I don’t think I’ve ever driven slower than I did that day. Everything felt different. I was extra careful. There was a new human being who depended on us. But I felt comfortable sitting in the driver’s seat of that minivan. It was already part of who we were as a family.

“Is the van going to start today?” My daughter would ask twelve years later as we got ready for school.

“I hope so,” I’d say.

And it would start. Not always smooth. Sometimes after a few minutes of not starting. Sometimes after needing a jump. Occasionally accompanied by a weird noise.

It was a question every morning though. We didn’t know what was going to happen when I turned the key.

It was time to move on.

It hit me hard when I realized that I’d never again drive the first car I drove as a dad. Cleaning out the remnants of a life lived always going from one activity to the next was fun but weird. There was a sweatshirt buried behind the seat that last fit our younger daughter five years ago.

My wife thinks I’m crazy for having mixed emotions about moving on from our minivan. For wanting to hold onto the past a little longer. For being reluctant to spend money on something new and shiny when the old beat-up version is still doing its thing.

I’m not overly sentimental about a crappy old car. But I want to take the time to appreciate something we often take for granted. It’s not a stretch to say that it was part of the family for a long time, or at least a home away from home for our family for a long time.

Our minivan chapter, and all of the changes and growth during it, is over. But the memories remain.

Do you think of your car as part of your family?

Your car gets you from place to place. But it’s also a reflection of how people see you. It’s the thing you search for when you come out of a store. An extension of your home. It’s somewhere you can be comfortable being yourself, singing along to the radio, or talking in ways you don’t do in public.

Our minivan was the first big thing my wife and I bought together as a married couple. I drove each of our daughters home from the hospital in it. It’s the vehicle that transported boxes and boxes of our stuff each of the two times we moved in the last seven years. Countless road trips to neighboring cities and states.

My wife sees a car past its prime. A car that is no longer reliable as we shuttle our girls across the state during this fall sports season.

That’s true, but I also see our old dog on the way back. He loved how he had his own spot back there and always enjoyed our trips. I see our girls as babies. The daily trips to daycare and later to their elementary schools.

I see emergency stops on the side of the road for pee breaks in a portable pink princess potty nestled between the back seats. Watching fireworks and drive-in movies from the back. I see my older daughter in the baby carrier in the back and then riding shotgun and all the other booster seats in between.

Our family grew up riding in that car. Every scratch, ding, tear, and crayon mark is part of our family’s story we’ve been writing for the past thirteen years.

Sure, there was that time that smoke came out from under the hood on the way home from a doctor’s appointment and the time it barely made it through a teacher parade during the pandemic, but over the years it mostly got us where we needed to go.

It was our home on wheels in a lot of ways, a small but consistent part of everyday life for thirteen years.

It’s weird to look in the garage and not see it anymore.

Is my wife being too matter-of-fact about dismissing it and replacing it with something new? Am I being too sentimental?

Probably yes to both. The right response is somewhere in the middle.

An object represents more than just the object. It can trigger our memories. But it’s still an object. And our memories live on.

Don’t forget to be grateful for the objects you have and the benefits they provide, but don’t get so hung up on any particular object that you lose sight of its function in your life.

I am excited about our new car. It’s nice not to wonder whether it will start or not every morning. But I’ll miss the old one. That’s what life’s all about though, moving forward while trying to honor the past.

It was weird to watch it drive away with someone else at the wheel, but also not that big of a deal. I have all of the memories even without the car in the garage.

We are who we are because of our past. The objects that were there are important but replaceable. The van is just a van. A vehicle. The moments are irreplaceable in our memories. It will always have a place in my memory as the first vehicle I drove as a dad.