I recently read an essay about a car. The author, Marina Keegan, reminisced about a Toyota Camry, her first car. She described how it had been a digest of her life. The joys and the sorrows it had seen her through. The bits of her life that were scattered in the trunk and tucked between the seats.
My current car has seen a lot. Of the 225,000 miles on the odometer, I've put well over half of those on in the six-odd years I've had it. Yet despite all that car has been through, all of the routine maintenance and uniquely Volvo problems it has survived, it's not my first car.
The first one holds a special place in every teenager's memory. The strangeness of the first 15 minute drive to school by myself, without another licensed adult in the passenger seat. The quirkiness that caused friends and siblings to open the door while moving (that's not the window handle!). That time my battery died at a post office on the other side of town. That time it died again at school and I had to roll it down the hill so my boyfriend could jump it.
When it's time to put my current vehicle out of its misery, I will remember what we've been through together, and I'll be ready to move on. But that first car, I wish we hadn't had to part ways.
