Last Trip Home

It Was Time. But It Was Never Just a Car.

The last car my parents owned during their lifetimes was a 2007 Toyota Corolla. It was Seafoam Green, not your standard color, but perfect for them.

If you knew my parents even slightly, you would be nodding your head right now.

The interior was some cushy synthetic fabric that absorbed everything like a thirsty sponge before retaining it for eternity. The interior smelled of my parents’ daily errand runs (fish store, cheese store, wine store, library) and more intimately, them. The car never relinquished their scent.

After my mom died in 2009, my dad drove the Corolla solo. She had long micro-managed his diet, and now he was freed up to make daily runs to Dunkin Donuts and Dairy Queen, invariably spilling chocolate donut crumbs or hot fudge sundae drippings between his splayed legs onto the driver’s seat. To put it delicately, the color and placement looked suspicious.

Another year passed, and my father’s macular degeneration worsened, which meant he could no longer drive. We lovingly, then forcefully, explained that his driving days were over, which upset him until Sam and I offered to buy the Corolla. When pricing it, he told us it was a hybrid (not true, but we let it slide) and a great car (which it absolutely was).

The Corolla was a modest yet conspicuous vehicle, that aforementioned seafoam green, slathered in decals from every school his ten grandchildren had ever attended. After my father’s death, it found new homes wherever one of his grandchildren required, in Connecticut, New York, and most recently, North Carolina.

In North Carolina, the car took Sarah and her herbs and plants and gardening tools everywhere, until she acquired a pickup truck and it became Rachael’s car. Rachael and her husband Will and their dog Lucy used it for their adventures, both local hikes and long distance treks back and forth to New England. It kept chugging along, the Little Corolla That Could.

But now, Rachael and Will are expecting a baby, and they need something bigger, safer, and I was going to say more reliable, but I don’t think a more reliable car has ever existed.

I advocated that they get a new vehicle and use the Corolla as a trade-in. That is the truth. But the truth is also that I am mourning the fact that I will never again be inside that car to conjure my parents’ presence or feel the enormity of their absence.

For some reason still I don’t understand, I craved the latter every bit as much. Maybe more.

I imagine some stranger driving the Corolla to its next destination- a scrap yard, a Toyota parts dealer- and thinking not nothing beyond the fact that the color is weird, while me, I’ve been on the edge of tears all day.

Still. I know I’ll be ecstatic when Rachael and Will arrive here safely in their new car. I know it was high time. But I also know that, along with that insane array of decals, the Corolla drives off into its sunset with a sizeable piece of my heart riding shotgun.