Farewell, Old Friend

Saturday morning I cleaned out my old car and got it ready for pick up by carsforbreastcancer.org. It's a 2001 Kia Rio, which I obviously liked because I bought a new one. It was the first new car I'd ever bought, and I owned it for more than 12 years. It's taken me to countless Renaissance Faires, Dance Camps, EfM mentor trainings, and family visits. It's helped me move five times, including the move here.

Even though it has less than 85,000 miles on it, the most recent issue that needed to be taken care of was probably more money to fix than the car is worth. And I could afford a new car. I saved enough money since coming down here to put down a significant deposit on the new one. But I didn't want to just junk it. Hence the donation.



With the new car came Virginia plates. For the first time in close to 30 years I don't have vanity plates. The original JEFFRI plates were a Christmas Gift from Brian when I still owned the Datsun F10. The most recent version of them are now on their way back to the Connecticut DMV. I thought I'd be more sentimental about giving them up, but I'm not. Maybe it's all part of moving on, moving forward.

In a few years when I look at this picture of the two cars together, I wonder what I'll remember, or what I'll read into it. Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes I look through the journals I've been keeping off and on for more than 40 years, and I find that how I saw something when I was in the midst of it is very different from how I see it now. Or remember it.

All of us carry those memories with us. They're part of us, part of who we are. That's nothing profound, but it's true.