Change Of The Guard

I had "owned" automobiles before, of course -- the cars of my teens, handed down by family members and driven until they died of terminal illness and/or operator error; the cars of my twenties, the Geo and the Corsica, both much loved and much missed -- but I had never walked onto a car lot with $17K or so in my pocket, ready to buy, until the tail end of 2000, when I bought a 2000 Toyota Camry with 15,468 miles on it.  A fairly new and reliable car for under twenty grand sounded like a deal.  If I only knew how reliable, I wouldn't have believed it.

Yesterday, I signed over the Camry to my sister, so that either my niece or my sister could have an extra car for the complicated logistics of teenage driving, with games and school and jobs and friends and dreams of sanctuary and escape.  After nearly twelve years of ownership, driving to New York (once) and Chicago (many times) and Detroit (so many more times) and Grand Rapids (sooooooo many more times), the odometer read 252,509 when I handed over the keys.  And aside from the odd repair here and there, individual repairs that never exceeded $900 at worst, it was easily the most reliable thing in my life during those twelve years.  After all, I had it for over 25% of my entire life.

I'm closing in on 42, and I'm trying to tell myself that I should learn to walk away from things, things like CD's and clothes and cars, because one can so easily be a slave to one's things, and as I get older, there will come a day when those things really won't matter.  Over the summer, I ripped over 300 CD's and packed them up to give to a good cause (Vertigo Records in Grand Rapids), and that was hard.  After all, might there not be a time in the future when I would need to have that one disc?  (Y'now, that kind of thinking.) But that was nothing compared to walking away from the Camry on Wednesday night.  I wanted to see how it all ends with that car, what the finish line looks like from inside the windshield, and I'm bummed to know that I won't get that first-hand experience.  But that's OK, right?  After all, it's just a car.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself.