I Got a New Car

I got a new car.
And what came with it totally took me by surprise.
I never anticipated that 5,000 pounds of steel, aluminum, and rubber would throw me for the loop it did.

Here is the thing: I didn’t want a new car, I needed one.

My ‘old car’ was my dream car. If I were to build a car to the exact specs I wanted, the old one was it.
And it came at the most intense time of our lives.

In 2013, we lost our home and most everything in it, to a fire. We had a four and two-year-old at the time, were displaced and living in someone else’s home, with nothing of our own, all while trying to rebuild our life.
I was also pregnant at this time, and two weeks after losing our home, we lost our baby.
Words cannot describe the pain and loss.

As we were starting over and trying to rebuild our life, we saw the hand of God bring beauty out of ashes. We began to build new memories in a foreign space, desperately trying to make it feel like our own.
Within the year, a new life began to grow in me.

During this time, and with the anticipated expansion of our family, my ‘dream car’ showed up on the side of the road with a for sale sign on it. I drove past it daily, never stopping to look, assuming it was way out of our budget. We could not take on one more thing. Until one day, I did stop, and amidst the fog I was living in, everything came together, miraculously, and the car became ours. 
The vehicle was 10 years old at the time, but it was new to me!

I pinched myself every time I drove it. I beamed when I looked in the review mirror and saw my now five-year-old and two-and-a-half-year-old holding hands in the back, hand on my belly as the new baby kicked.  I felt like the most blessed woman in the entire world.

Over the next 12 years, that car went on more adventures, held more memories, and was reliable in times when nothing else was.
I never fell out of love with it, nor did I ever dream of anything else.

150,000 thousand miles turned to 200,000 miles as years passed and  memories kept compiling.
Eventually, the air conditioning went out and I spent two summers with the windows down, wind in my hair, and only a few complaints.
New rituals that came with age didn’t bother me, like having to bang on the dash to get the ‘stuck’ CD player to stop the noise it made, or remembering to child-lock the back windows because if someone accidentally rolled them down, they might not go back up.

Reality began to settle in, like it has a way of doing, and we knew that 22 years and nearly 250,000 miles on her made long road trips seem less than wise.
So we began looking for a new car.
I was excited, at first. Air conditioning filled my dreams. Doors that could unlock with the click of a button seemed luxurious, and the confidence of being able to go places without the worry of breaking down felt nice (although we had never broken down before, mind you.) 

For months and months I searched far and wide for the next ‘perfect car.’
The search felt exhilarating, but quickly became stressful.

I realized that between the time I bought my current car, and the newer cars I was looking at, much had changed in the world of automobiles.
It seemed that people no longer drove cars, but cars drove people.
It seemed that vehicles were less knobs and gears and buttons, and had become computers, screens, and notifications. 

Perhaps the average person is drawn to this wave of the future that people desire.
Perhaps I am not your average person, because I yearned for the basics, the things I knew, with just a few less years and miles on the odometer.

I became selective, because as I looked at my dream car sitting in the driveway, I struggled with paying money for something I loved less than what I had.

Hours, days, months of searching, my list of requirements were being refined. 
Until one day, I found it. The seller was perfect, the price was perfect, and the location was perfect. It was just barely old enough that it still felt like a vehicle, not a spaceship.

Hands were shaken and transactions took place.
I was elated. Over-the-top excited. I stared at pictures of it, pinching myself that this was mine.
I couldn’t believe it. I felt fancy and spoiled.
I praised God for the gift.

As I hopped into the car and drove it away from the bank, I was suddenly overcome with emotion, but not the emotion I expected to have driving a new car that I had searched for for so long.

Tears started to fall down my face as I looked down and around.
This wasn’t my car. This car didn’t feel like me. There are no memories in the seats, no adventures that I can recall as I drive down the road.
And in the review mirror was my daughter following me in my old car, the car that held it all. The car that brought that new baby home from the hospital, the baby that brought life after so much death. The car that we all grew up in.

And I cried. And cried. And realized I didn’t want a new car, I wanted the old one, forever, and I wanted the time back that we had in it. I wanted to relive it all again.

As a week went by, I stared  out the window at the new car in the driveway, wondering if it would ever feel like me, if I would ever feel like myself in it.
As I came out of the grocery store to get in it, I was impressed by the way I could swoop my foot under the back and it would open for me, but it felt like it was too much, too fancy, not me. Strangely, I missed fidgeting with the back door to get it to open, remembering exactly when it broke.
Although this car was still 10 years old, it felt far too much for me. 

I longed for the simple.

I got home, wiped the tears from my eyes, and unloaded groceries with my son who had come out to help.  “Mom! I decided for sure that I am going to buy the old car from you. I am so excited. Let’s take it out the canyon and up over the hill for a ride. I’ll drive.”

I dropped the groceries on the counter and grabbed the keys (real keys, not an electronic fob) and off we went, he in the driver's seat, and the groceries left to put away later.

As he drove, he began to tell me all about the adventures he was going to take that car on, what he was going to do to modify it, and how excited he was.

As town grew smaller in the rearview and the pavement turned to dirt, I started to catch the vision.
With windows down, the smell of pine trees filled the cab and all we could see were mountains for miles. Shared music blasted through the canyon until it was turned down just slightly as he shared his heart about life, friends, and more.

He finally said, “Mom, this car isn’t going anywhere. You can drive it anytime you want, and you can ride with me all the time! You aren’t losing something; you are just gaining something else. And your new car is cool and you are going to love it. Give it a chance.” 

And it struck me. He was right.
The passing of time is not the losing of one thing, it is the gaining of another.
All the years and memories in that car were just the beginning.
We had so many more to build, in this car, and that one.  

The yearning to re-live the old memories threatened to rob me of the joy of creating new ones.
But the truth is, as time passes, we can carry the amazing memories we have into the next season, where we will add new to the old.

This is not an easy season, this season where I am living in the tension of holding onto the old and embracing the new; where laughter and tears exist at the same time, and mourning and celebrating seem so intertwined.

For now, I will turn off the AC I so desperately wanted and roll the windows down, letting the dust from the dirt roads settle over the newness, in hopes that, as it starts to feel a little more lived in, new memories will start to grow, and the new car will start to feel a little bit more like me.