Goodbye old friend

I'll be the first to admit I'm materialistic. We work hard and like nice stuff. And so I'm bummed to say goodbye today to my decade old friend, which is pretty silly because she was just a car. The first nice new thing I bought with a freshly new graduate degree in hand, and no job, which then drove me every day to that great new career. The safe way to get back and forth to my family 120 miles away.  The item I stood against when that great guy gave me his phone number. The car who was stolen and left in an alley, but found her way back to us, with a lost set of keys hidden in the seat fold just waiting to be found and allow us not to have replace the steering column. The vehicle that drove my mother-in-law and I in a blizzard to Colorado in hopes that an infertility treatment would work and provide a funny story if it had. The car we paid off to buy a nicer house. The car I reluctantly handed over to B as a work vehicle so he would be safe and I wouldn't have to part with her. The car I reluctantly agreed to finally part with because the amount we agreed on as a bottom line is exactly the amount we need to make another dream come true. Goodbye my Escapay friend. I hope you take care of your next family as well as you did us.

I'm sad to let go of that car but as I read the responses left by my family and friends, I realized what I was feeling was not only the loss of the place that holds so many memories, good, bad, and ugly, but also the memories themselves (several of which I didn't include).  The car tends to be the place I seek refuge and reflection time. As I drive back and forth from home to work or to shuttle the boy to school and grandma, I have sometimes loud and sometimes quiet conversations with God. I reflect on the past and daydream about the future. While I hadn't driven her in some time, each time I got in the driver's seat it was like being welcomed home.

I originally posted parts of this as a Facebook status, but decided it would be a good push to resuscitate and reinvigorate my very dead blog. I realized after I started writing, through tears, that what I was doing was writing a love letter to my beloved SUV. Not entirely my own invention, as my blogger friend Kerstin had posted a Love Letter to Our Home in 2013. I had written a response to her post then when I was still grieving our little old starter home.  

I have thought many times over the past few years about starting to blog again.  Many of the great local blogs I read start ideas, both new and responsive to what they have to say, swirling in my head.  I have had many excuses for not doing it, but lately I've realized that what I want to write is longer than a Facebook status and not necessarily perfect for a guest post on someone else's site. 

So maybe today is the start of something.  Maybe not.  Only time will tell.