Not Ready to Say Good-bye...Yet

The summer of '95 was a hot one. How do I remember this? Because it was the summer that I told my dear husband that I wasn't going to visit his parents anymore. Well, at least not until we had a car with an air conditioner. His parents at that time lived six hours away and in the "hot" part of the state and we had just returned from a visit in which Katelyn got heat sick over and back. I was so sad to see Katelyn so miserable, uncomfortable, and throwing up, especially since she was (and is) such a good traveller. Seeing that misery caused me to make that rash statement.

My sweet husband was of course understanding and did what he always does...he set about finding a solution to the problem. He immediately started scouring the local car lots, diligently watching the auto ads in the newspaper, and putting out feelers every where to find us a car. This was in the days before Google, Autotrader.com, etc. The search took a lot of effort on his part, but he was determined. And it wasn't long before he found a car that met all of the requirements: four doors, economical, reliable, low miles, and mostly importantly had an air conditioner.

And that is how our little Honda Civic became a member of the family. We purchased her in October of 1995. She was only a year old, had less than 11000 miles on her, and was just around $10000.00. She has been a great little car. Somewhere along the way she was dubbed "the baby car" by me and "the hot rod" by Dave. She was the car that we brought Carson home from the hospital in. She was the car that my brother, Dan, used to learn how to drive a manual transmission. She carried the kids and me back and forth to Olympia a couple of times a week for about a year so Katelyn could take gymnastic lessons. She is the car that Katelyn, age 7, and Grandma Graham backed into with Grandpa Bud's golf cart (and the window hasn't worked quite right since). She is the car that convinced my Grandpa Lee to buy his own Honda Civic after he had her for a couple of weeks while his car was in the shop in Spokane. So many memories are wrapped up in that little car.

I was diligent in keeping up with the routine maintenance so that the addage "Honda's will run forever" would be true for us. But sadly, over that last few months the baby car has started to show her age. The cost of repairs have been more than what the baby car (with over 220,000 miles) is worth, but I'm just not ready to let go. That is so illogical, I know, especially since I'm not driving her anymore. She has now become Dave's commuter car, but I do still take her out every now and then.

I know that eventually we will have to let her go. But until we have saved up enough cash to buy another commuter car for Dave, we will repair the baby car and see if we can get her to limp to the finish. I think by then I'll be OK with saying good-bye.

PS Yes I realize how stupid it is to be so attached to a car. And yes I realize that in the scope of life's tragedies this doesn't even rate. But I am feeling a little melancholy about the Honda being deep within the sunset of her life. And, I'm probably putting more emotion into this so I don't have to face the emotions that keep bubbling up when I think about Katelyn heading off to college in a couple of months.