One Dead Car

One would think with everything I have on my to do list (lose 115 pounds – yea team for the first thirteen--, earning enough to buy a house, providing special things for my children, volunteering for activities I believe will help create world peace and doing my chores) I’ve got zip, zero time to deal with getting rid of somebody else’s dead car.

When I first drove to see the house I turned it down because there were two dead cars in the front year. Great location, great floor plan, great price, but a previous tenant had left dead cars years before I came along.

The other two choices for housing had more unworkable negatives so door # 3 it was with the bonus dead car.

I don’t have much hate in my life. I really don’t. It’s a God thing.  But I hate dead cars. To me they are like the dirty dressings pulled off near fatal wounds. They serve an iconic position in my history. That’s the reason for the aversion.

When I became a single mom I was left with a car with a blown engine. So… the first loaner was the Blue Angel.  A huge monstrosity of a once proud class symbol, I believe this particular station wagon had wings… well fins at least. Its story includes the deer running from Mom’s to K2 that used my front hood as a bounce board to accomplish crossing the street. Neither of us was injured. Both of us were traumatized.

Next we were given the Audi. It was and always will be beloved for its heater this diesel Audi 5000 with a sunroof in which I caught my hair coming back from a ministerial conference in Eastern Washington causing me to get a ticket for coming into Issaquah doing eighty as I wrestled to get it out of the machinations of said sunroof. ‘Really officer’. I honestly don’t remember how it died, but it had the good sense to do it in the shop.

The garage gave us Big Bird so named by Ray and Ryan because it was a yellow vanagan with overly large side view mirrors, or so it seemed. Dying sooner rather than later (and leaking like a sieve through it’s sunroof, it stayed in the parking lot of the apartments when we got the humungous oversized van.  Then came the Oldsmobile station wagon. That was my personal favorite. I loved that little car. I loved Oldsmobiles. I’m sorry they went out of business. It’s story ended with three engines to replace the broken one all of which were defective and then the mechanic went out of business. We had the Vanagan towed as well.

Then … I know it boggles the mind… there was the Dodge Aires.  I was going to save the car and have it restored as a symbol of God’s restorative power. But in an unusual turn of events, it ended up being towed. At that point I learned an important theological lesson that liberals have a lot of trouble with.  God doesn’t make, or like, junk. I didn’t have to romanticize poverty. Poverty is evil.

So since early Spring I have been working with the property manager to get the dang thing towed, this Buick that served it’s master well no doubt but now is just a canvas for algae and pine needles.

Umpteen phone calls later, deep conversations with the towing company, a visit from a cop to sign off on the thing and we are one registered letter away from getting rid of it. Do I wish the person had taken their trash with them? Certainly. But that’s not always possible and I have all the compassion in the world for their circumstances.

Everybody has an eyesore from the past they would like to forget. Having that car sit there for months while I live in ‘almost perfect’ reminds me to treat my history with tenderness. I cannot hate my past and live a healthy present. I cannot whitewash my past and live an authentic present.  I cannot resent my challenges and live today with balance.

Ultimately the story of dead cars is learning how to remove them and send them to the scrap yard while cherishing the memories of their newer days.

This past summer at Family Camp, Joe and Caity surprised me by singing the duet from “Phantom of the Opera”: ‘All I Ask of You’. Why? Because one of their favorite childhood memories is riding in the Audi with the soundtrack to that musical blaring away. Irony. And they wanted to move me to tears (because they both are amused by my tender heart). Seeing and hearing them certainly did that.

The lesson of dead cars is to accept the reality of history, move on, keep the good, and create something beautiful out of the bad. Repeat as often as necessary. May it be so for you.

Love,
Deborah