Holding On & Letting Go

After a respectable decade together, a failed transmission and a hard reality check quietly revealed the end of a chapter (well, at least in one way, under the hood). I had grown attached to the old bucket the way people hold on to old boots or chipped mugs, less because they are objectively good, and more because they are familiar, and you know their moods.

I did not choose the old wagon. She was given to me, and I received her with little protest, more resigned than enthusiastic, accepting what was placed in my hands and resolving to care for it well. I met her with tenderness and patience, diligent to her maintenance, tending to what could be tended, accommodating what could not, learning her limits until they became familiar terrain. And she ran. She ran until she was done.

In my family, running has always been the gold standard. We are not fancy people. If a thing starts when called upon and does not burst into flame on the highway, it is considered excellent. All I really needed was to get from point A to point B alive. This was the bar.

Then, suddenly, I was given this new one.

And good Lord.

This thing is less a car than an experience. Smooth, capable, and faintly indecent in how good it is at everything.

The steering wheel is heated, which struck me, at first, as the kind of luxury that ought to embarrass a person. But on a cold morning I would now defend it with my life.

The seats have temperature control. They can warm me up and cool me down according to the weather. The vents, at first, feel unexpected, intimate, and faintly European, like a bidet, or olives served warm. It has quickly folded into the category of things I cannot imagine living without.

It turns itself off at stoplights to save fuel, something my dad used to do manually at intersections twenty years ago, mostly so he could feel superior to everyone else idling nearby as he saved his pennies and the Earth.

It purrs delicately, little courteous notes, like a librarian clearing her throat. She hums instead of complains.
She nudges instead of hollers.
My old car, by contrast, communicated like a scandalized activist:
HEY YOU! FLASHING LIGHT. SOMETHING IS WRONG. EVERYTHING IS WRONG.

This new one merely sings: 
Just a note, you appear to be drifting toward calamity.

It also has lane assist, which means whenever I intentionally edge toward the shoulder, whether to dodge a pothole, avoid roadkill, or graze the rumble strip to get the children’s attention, the car resists me like a sanctimonious mule. Apparently I am no longer trusted to steer my own vehicle. It seems to be watching over me in small invisible ways, alerting me to hazards I hadn’t even noticed, quietly correcting course before trouble becomes trouble.

What would have jostled me before, this one simply absorbs. The road can be rough, uneven, rutted out and still we glide over it as though turbulence were merely a suggestion. And when I ask something of it, speed, strength, urgency, it answers with power so effortless and restrained, as though it’s always been capable of far more than it lets on.

I remain partial to this trim package. I still catch myself looking at its sleek, elegant lines, built with a confidence that doesn’t beg to be noticed but is impossible to ignore.

Still, what surprises me most is not the infatuation, but the peace.
I did not realize how much low, constant worry I carried before. The small private tension of wondering whether the old machine would complain, falter, groan, or some fresh mechanical indignity. The sort of wear that arrives gradually: first a hesitation, then a habit, then a kind of settled malaise mistaken for normal. You adapt. You compensate. You stop expecting ease.

Ease, it turns out, is not indulgence.
 Reliability is romantic. Competence is deeply attractive. I’ve begun inventing reasons to go for a drive to nowhere, simply for the pleasure of going.

I am prideful. Suspicious of shiny things. Mostly because I have long believed I ought to make do. That wanting more is vanity, that comfort belongs to other people, that “good enough” is good enough for me. While I continue to work through these things, once I’ve surrendered, I am sold clean through. And I am sold. There is no going back. Only forward.

Clarity also has a way of identifying what has long been broken. Once you know what ease is, it is foolish to keep calling strain “normal.” Resistance to change begins to feel less like virtue and more like stubbornness.

Curiously, surrender did not make me reckless with what I already had. Quite the opposite. It made me more attentive, more gentle. It encouraged my resolve to keep her running, because the very thing that stirs my heart asked me to care for her well. So I will do my best.

Well, anyways. The new car is such a blessing. Gifts are meant to be received and held with gratitude.

What is there to do but sit back, loosen my grip, and enjoy the ride.