Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.
I am drowning in it.
I began my day listening to Whole Again by Jackson MacKenzie on Audible as I drove the 15 miles from home to the Honda dealership. Where my CRV was due for its 50,000-mile service appointment.
I was so absorbed by what Jackson was explaining to me about the protective self that I missed Waze’s directions. Twice. Including blowing right past the exit I needed and having to pull a U-turn. (Conceivably illegal.)
TOTALLY WORTH IT.
MacKenzie’s book deserves its own gratitude post. For now, let me just say that the resonances I have felt to my own lived experiences have been staggering. Also: haunting, comforting, validating. enlightening, hopeful, stunning, life-shifting.
If you have any experience with relationships in which one person gives more than the other, you need this book now. I’ll send a gift copy to the 36th person who signs up for my newsletter using the subscribe button below.
I show up seven minutes late for my 9:30 a.m. service appointment and apologize to John Rooney, the service tech who checks me in.
No big whoop, he assures me.
A signal on my dashboard has been flashing B123 for the past couple of weeks, I explain. And the tire pressure warning light is on more than it’s off. Having little apparent relationship to the actual condition of the tires.
Calling up my maintenance records, John calls bullshit on the warning lights my car’s internal computer has been flashing. Based on my mileage and when I was in last, he thinks I can get by with just a routine oil change and tire rotation. Sweet.
“How do you like your CRV?” John asks casually. He’s printing out the paperwork to get service on the car underway.
“No complaints,” I say. “Serves my needs. And it’s been a helluva lot more reliable than my husband’s BMW.”
John laughs and we agree that the German cars may be a dream to drive, but they’re also a nightmare to maintain.
“It’s not exactly sexy,” I say of my mud-splashed white CRV. “But I’m also a 44-year-old mom.”
Kindly, John is quick to say he thinks CRVs are actually really good-looking cars.
Reminiscing About the Way Back
“Well, at least it’s not a minivan,” I say.
My kids have managed to share a single back seat without killing each other yet, I tell John. So far.
Before I know, it I’m reminiscing about the way back seat of the family car I sat in on a month-long drive across country when I was 14. I spent the entire trip writing desperate postcards to my friends back home. Crossing the days off on a calendar one by one.
“My brother and I DEFINITELY would have killed each other if we had to share a seat,” I say.
Laughing, John immediately wants to know if our family car growing up was a station wagon with a back-facing third row seat. Like his.
“Nope. Ours was a not-quite minivan, something called a Colt Vista,” I say. “The ‘way back’ seats faced forward, but you had to be a contortionist to get in and out of them.”
John nods knowingly.
“The Colt Vista. Assembled in Japan by Mitsubishi, sold in the U.S. by Plymouth,” he recites.
I nod, amazed he knows it.
Surviving Shit Boxes
“A shit box,” he says.
Laughing, I nod again.
“Shit boxes were my family’s specialty,” I say. “My parents drove matching Chevettes before the Vista.”
“No way!” John says. His first THREE cars were Chevettes.
The first one he bought used off of some girl who had scrawled all over its exterior.
“Why would I want a car covered in some girl’s handwriting?” John asked his dad when they went to look at it.
“Because it’s what you can afford,” his father said. He bought the car.
John and I spend another five minutes reminiscing about the Chevettes of our past.
Gratitude for shit boxes. Gratitude for surviving them. Gratitude for unexpected connections with strangers.
How many degrees of separation are there between you and a Chevette?
This just in: How much did I love seeing a Chevette driven by Kerri Washington in the Hulu series based on Little Fires Everywhere? “Don’t deface the Chevette,” she tells her daughter, nixing a saccharine bumper sticker.
