--Neil Young, "Long May You Run", 1976
After all, it’s only a car, right? A machine. A ride.
Transportation to get from point A to point B.
A collection of moving mechanical parts with no personality, no soul, no
life. Who would actually fall in love
with an automobile, and then when it expires, when it goes to the big salvage
yard in the sky and takes one last road trip; who would be sad about the end of
a relationship between a vehicle and a person?
Me.
Last week my sky blue 2003 Toyota Matrix station wagon died.
It kicked the bucket, or actually the oil can, was a victim of this harsh
winter and plain old age. One day this coming
week a tow truck operator named Chuck will hoist her up, then haul her away,
never to be seen again, at least not by my eyes. After 182,436 miles of
driving, my companion for these past eleven years and ten months (4,235 days to
be exact), my little Matrix…it is finis.
No: she wasn’t a fancy car, a muscle car, a collector’s
item, or a sleek ultra luxury import sedan that turned heads or elicited sighs
of envy from fellow drivers. One relative called it “the clown car”. It was
kind of frumpy in its own singular way, frugal on gas, basic in design, a
utilitarian ride that started up almost every single time I put the key in the
ignition, the first new car I ever bought. At the end of life it certainly
showed its age. There was a missing hub cap lost somewhere in the snows of
2013. A CD player and tape deck long
since broken. A cracked rear tail
light. A back bumper held in place by
grey duct tape. Eighteen peeling bumper
stickers plastered to the hatchback. Everybody in my small town knew when
John’s car was coming or going.
But man, I loved that car. Even though it was a “thing”, an
inanimate object, it somehow helped mark the passage of my life, contained the accumulation
of so many days and so many memories. Daily, the car reminded me of where I’d journeyed
and how fast time does go by. The sunny April day I picked her up at the
dealership in 2003, the Red Sox had yet to win a championship in the modern
era. A guy named Bush was in the White House and we’d just invaded Iraq. My now
young adult all grown up nieces were then still in grammar school and my Dad
was still alive too.
Cleaning out the car one last time was bittersweet. I found an old movie stub from a first date
in a darkened movie theater years ago that I had with…well…I can’t remember her
name anymore. There was a worn set of Mardi gras beads wrapped around the stick
shift. I picked those up in New
Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina. I’ll save them. I found a hospital parking
pass I’d used in visits to a parishioner, whose hands I held in prayer, who is
now gone from the earth. My long lost Leatherman
multi-tool was buried under the front seat. So that’s where it went!
Found objects all: each in its own ways telling a story, my
story, life’s story.
Stories of late night summer road trips, the windows down, a
baseball game on the radio, freedom on an open road in a moonlight kissed
landscape. Stories of cross country sabbatical road trips all the way to
Minnesota, so excited to go away, then reluctant to come back home. Stories of
time with my Goddaughter Chloe, snug and safe in the backseat, singing at the
top of her lungs, her blue eyes smiling at me in the rear view mirror on the drive
to the Dunkin Donuts for a hot chocolate.
There is something that is so real, so tangible about the
objects, the things of this life that we claim as our own and which also claim
us, like my car. It’s tempting to think
that all of our “stuff” is not that
important, is the mere flotsam of living. That things are finally fleeting, disposable,
forgettable. But we humans are both spiritual
and material. Ethereal and tangible. We live in our heads and thoughts, but we
also live in this real world. Real. We touch. We hold. We grasp. Our senses nail us to the earth and
all that is within it and so real things do embody for us real and deeper
meaning. These objects are like spiritual
totems, physical containers of a life, like my ancient automobile. Like Grandpa’s
pocket watch, worn down and smooth from so many years of timekeeping. It now
tells us the time. Like a favorite childhood book we still cherish, its pages
frayed and faded, the scrawl of our childish signature on the inside cover. Like the wedding ring passed down from mother
to daughter and then to her daughter too.
Maybe things do matter.
So farewell Matrix. You were a good friend: loyal, true and
faithful. Within your embrace I lived a
lot of life, a lot of a good life. You
were metal and plastic and rubber and yet you were also much more than that.
You were real.
Long may you run.
No comments:
Post a Comment