Open Letters to my Ford Explorer and My Beloved on His 34th Birthday

Okay, this is a two-part post. The first part is a Blog Blast for Patty from CarBlabber, whom I met at BlogHer this year and who rocks.  Also, the Parent Bloggers Network. 

Dear New Car:

I’m sorry, but you were unplanned.  We bought you in 2005 after my beloved Priscilla, a 1994 Geo Prizm, was t-boned on Ward Parkway with me in her. I had intended to keep Priscilla until your brother Jeb, a 1998 Ford Explorer, passed on to that great SUV graveyard in the sky, but her candle blew out long before the legend ever did.

I loved Priscilla. I bought her off Pa shortly after I moved to Kansas City. She had a stick shift and got 36 miles to the gallon. She aligned with my environmental beliefs, and she was blue. Dear Priscilla, rest in peace.

With Priscilla died my desire to name my car. Your brother, Jeb, is the last car that I think will be named in our family. Jeb was our first big-kid car, and I remember fondly the day we traded in my beloved’s Ford Escort for him for almost the same exact loan. We learned with Jeb that you probably shouldn’t finance a four-year-old car for four years, so when we bought you, you were only one year old with ridiculously high mileage, and that combined with the employee-cost deal that was going on in the summer of 2005 enabled us to buy you even though you are decidedly too good for us.

I have an arms’ length relationship with you, because I think sometimes you might be ashamed of me. I get in your leather-seated, sunroofed, sports-packaged self wearing flip flops I bought at the drug store and a t-shirt with holes. I don’t wash you with any sort of regularity, and I’m afraid of what I might find if I looked too closely between your seat cushions. I hate your gas mileage, and I’m ashamed that we have two SUVs when we went to great lengths to buy efficient appliances for Chateau Travolta, have four mature trees on our property and recycle with gusto. That said, I love your size. I love that I can store a swimming noodle, a stroller, a thousand-pack of bottled water and an elephant in my car at all times. I love that your windows are tinted so that I never had to get one of those Baby on Board window screens advertising that not only am I a mother, I’m a complete dork. I love your width and breadth, the fact that when I’m driving you, I can back over smaller cars like so many ants with nary a fender dent. I love how safe I feel in you, even though you could roll over or explode at any second, according to many reports. It is an illusion, that safety, but considering what a bad driver I am, it’s an illusion important to my daily commute.

When I look at you in the parking garage at work, I think you are pretty. I love your silver color. When I drive you through distressed neighborhoods on the way home from work, I think you are an unnecessary waste of resources that could be better spent in some other way. But that you might also look nice with spinner rims. I am more ambivalent about my cars than I am about any other part of my extremely ambivalent life, as cars are so necessary to my Kansas City life but also such a ridiculously depreciable asset and waster of our earth’s resources. I wish you were Priscilla many days, because I never felt bad or wasteful about driving Priscilla. Also, I owned Priscilla outright, even if she bluebooked at $900, and I was very happy about having no car payments at all whatsoever for her and Jeb for two years. I hate your car payment, New Car. Really. Seriously. Hate it.

However, when I go down to the parking garage at the end of the day today and push that little button on my key ring and you turn on your little mirror lights, it’s almost as though you’re smiling at me. You say, “even though you hate me, I am still here, yearning for your love and affection.” If I can’t find you, I can press your panic button and you will bleat for me like a little lost sheep. In those moments, I do love you, secretly, even though it costs $50 to fill up your tank. Ours is a complicated and emotion-frought relationship, but I’d rather have you than not have you. Please do not die on the way home tonight just because I wrote this.

In other news, today is my beloved’s 34th birthday. He says he’s now middle-aged. One of the nicest things that anyone ever did for me was when the Mommybloggers wrote something called In Praise of Rita. It’s one of those things I go look at when I’m having a really bad day. I’d like to do one for my beloved. If you know my beloved, feel free to leave your praise in the comments.

In praise of my beloved.

·        You are wicked funny. The other day when I left the garage door open accidentally, you texted me to tell me that the robbers who had invaded our house due to my oversight had taken only Bella, my massage chair and my box of wine. The day I was having a horrible day at work, you texted me a quote from Dog the Bounty Hunter.  I keep these texts to remind me how funny you are, not that I need reminding.

·        You are generous and sweet.  Just this month you surprised me with tickets to see the Indigo Girls, just because, and you didn’t even pretend you wanted to go with me, just gave them to me to do with as I pleased.

·        You support my interests.  You’ve been very patient with this book thing, and the blogging thing, and the BlogHer thing, and have graciously taken care of the little angel while I partied in Chicago and put up with the $900 legal fee and the $80 here and there for Kinko’s and postage and the sulking into the wine when it gets rejected and the delusions of grandeur when I think someone might publish it. I’m difficult to live with, and you deserve an award.

·        You’re good to your family.  You put such a high priority on seeing them, even though there are like 1,200 of them and none of them live closer than three hours away from us by car.  I adore them, too, but your commitment to seeing them at every possible venture has overcome my undying hatred of the great American highway.  Despite my bitching every time we have to strap it in for an eight-hour drive, seeing how excited you get to see the little angel playing with her cousins totally makes it all worth it. Plus, they like me better than you sometimes.

·        You’re good to my family. I know we’re a handful and often you’re the only unmedicated person at the table. You totally put up with us and are helpful and sweet, and I appreciate that more than you will ever know.

·        You’re an awesome father.  Yesterday when the little angel made you so mad, you still insisted that you take her to school so that you didn’t leave her angry. The fact that you had the presence of mind to even think that way in the midst of your anger impresses me so much.

·        You iron much better than I do. In fact, you’re kind of obsessive about it. This is good when I want you to iron my stuff, too.

·        You’re handy.  You can do stuff like put up molding and use a chainsaw, and even though I gripe about your need to buy or rent tools, I’m secretly totally turned on by the size of your drill bits.

·        You’re hot.  You’re so much more Ed Harris than Ken Jennings, and the way your skin crinkles around your blue eyes, which are the only blue eyes I’ve ever seen that remind me of mine on a guy, is very attractive to me. You also have nice broad shoulders. 

·        You’re romantic. The other day you called me to tell me you loved me because you saw some people who were screaming at each other in the middle of a parking lot and were so happy that wasn’t us. I like that you think that way, and it’s part of the reason we are not the ones screaming at each other in the parking lot. You have a unique ability to see the big picture that I really value.

I’ll stop for now. Feel free to chime in, remembering that we don’t use my beloved’s name on this blog.