Ch-ch-changes

That's all I can give you now. But I feel a blog change coming on too. If I find the time...and energy.

An addendum to my previous post:

I don't know how to format photos. I am a moron. But I think my point is still made.

Also, I did not forget that yesterday was Smith's birthday; however, my computer and Internet were having some issues. That, and I got caught up in a night of all-you-can-eat shrimp scampi and UHF. Oh yes, I ate all I could eat. So delicious. So garlic-y. I paid for that today at work. Thank goodness I carry Gas-X in my purse. I'm sure everyone else who shares my cube is happy too. Had it been 206A, I might not have held back.

My Birthday Surprise Part II

I stood there, mouth gaping, for a good three minutes while my father and my father-in-law snapped pictures. It was truly the only time in my life I was ever speechless. And completely out of character for me, I cried. Not shoulders- heaving sobs or anything, but quiet, soft tears. Even now I'm not sure if they were happy tears or not.

The car wasn't light blue anymore. It didn't have banged up bumpers or wiggly, ready-to-drop at any moment side rails. My mom asked me later if I knew that it was my car, not some other car, and I told her of course I knew it was mine. Even cleaned up as it was, and purple (the exact purple color of my sister-in-law's KitchenAid mixer), I knew it was mine. I knew the boy had heard me say enough times that I didn't ever want another bug, that I wanted my bug back someday.

Of course, I'm not even sure that's true. I had given up on that dream, thinking it was silly to be so sentimental over something like a car. Either way, it was my dream and the boy had gone ahead and made it happen. He had been sending checks to his dad for a year to pay for repairs and paint and new bumpers and engine tune-ups. His dad had been sending him pictures of the process. He and Jess had made secret trips to pick up my new transmission, a part which sat in my garage for months. A part I believed was scrap metal the boy had saved to give to his dad for junk. A part I wanted desperately to be removed from my garage because it looked like a hunk of scrap metal.

And this dream that I had long abandoned, that I had made my peace with, was sitting in near pristine condition in front of me. I was surprised. I was shocked. I was frightened because I wasn't sure I even wanted this car back, that I wanted to go back to that part of my life. And now I didn't have a choice.

That's not to say I'm not incredibly moved and touched and amazed that my husband would do something so wonderful, so thoughtful for me. Afterall, what man goes to all that effort and expense? It's no wonder everyone expected that I would give him a little something in return. But at the same time, that's not fair. I didn't ask for this back, and I don't think of sex as a reward. And then I feel a little guilty because apparently everyone else does.

The car still doesn't have plates. His brother never transferred the title to his name, so it's still in my dad's name. He was supposed to have it transferred, have it licensed before I got it. But that didn't happen. So I could only pull it out of the garage and into the driveway, nearly killing it because I took my foot off the clutch too fast. Yep, I pretty much got to embarrass myself in front of everyone too. I was never the best at driving stick. For the first three months I owned it, I killed it at every stop sign. My friends stopped wanting to ride with me. I eventually figured out I was putting it into third instead of first. Five years away from that car, I know I'm no good anymore. The boy and I proved this when we decided we couldn't handle it anymore and had to take it out at least once around the block, plates or not. That car growled every time I slowed or sped up or stopped. But maybe that's just because the new transmission isn't in yet.

Two weeks later and I'm still not sure where I'm at with this car. Pretty sure I'm happy to have it back. Sometimes I sneak into the garage and sit in it, sighing as I take in thirty years of smells. That smell that only an original beetle has--old, musty, dank. Stuck in the seats stuffed with what looks like hemp. Mom said she'd help me get the smell out, but I shook my head. "That's a good smell, Mom." Since I sold my bug, I took every chance I got to sit in an old bug and breathe in that smell. It's the smell of Kaplan's Woods, of my first real boyfriend, of peacock pants and hippie t-shirts. Of non-conformity and of a life before mortgages and forty hour work weeks and electric bills and dog grooming appointments.

My Birthday Surprise Part I

I'm doing this in parts because it sparked a whole essay. I have more to write about this, but I want to get that main story out there, the story that basically declares my husband as the most thoughtful husband ever. And sneaky. Sneaky, sneaky bastard.

Part I:

I paid cash for my first car. A 1973 Super Beetle with a ’72 engine. I was in high school and a self-proclaimed hippie. It was the last time in my life that I was a size small enough to purchase clothes at Abercrombie…but I didn’t. I chose baggy t-shirts proclaiming “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” and Salvation Army pants. Indeed, I owned a pair of camos and wore them on a regular basis. I sewed peacock fabric into the seams of my jeans. I wore platforms and Airwalks. I probably smelled bad. I revolted against consumerism, conforming, and “The Man.” This car seemed to embody everything I was and wanted to be.

It wasn’t a fantastic car by any means. I talked the guy down to $900. He had wanted a grand. If I had known anything about cars at the time, I would have walked away from this one. I learned years later it had been in several accidents, had most of its parts Bond-Oed together. “N-rigged,” my brother-in-law called it.

At the time I bought it, I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift. I had my dad drive it home for me. I figured I’d learn later, in the church parking lot a block from our house. I’d drive around in circles until I mastered the difference between first and third gear.

This was the car I drove to Kaplan’s Woods after school, where us hoodlums hung out and smoked and played sepia and ate Taco Johns because one of the guys knew someone who worked there and we could get it cheap. Couples would hold hands and walk into the woods and come back with red faces and tangled hair. This was the car I drove to Happy Chef after dinner, where we made ourselves comfortable in Booth 10 while Colleen kept refilling our coffees. This was the car I drove to my boyfriend’s house ten miles out in the country, two of them gravel roads. I didn't worry about dings or paint chips with this car.

Just before leaving for my freshman year of college my brother bought a new car, and I bought his sporty two-door, red Cavalier at a bargain price. I took the insurance off the bug, left it behind with my Nirvana posters and my peacock pants and my collection of stuffed bunnies. I had the best intentions of keeping it safely stored at my uncle's, but by second semester I was in dire need of a computer. I sold the bug for $800, enough to buy a rebuilt computer that would die a year later. It didn't take me long to know I had sold out, that I had become "The Man."

To be fair, I sold the car to my (future) brother-in-law. He had gone to school to rebuild cars, though he's spent the last ten years managing cell phone stores and meat packing plants. I planned to let him fix it up and then, when I had the money, offer him more than he could refuse to sell it back to me. I knew I would never want another bug, but I still wanted that one.

He took no time stripping it apart, taking off the paint. Then he let it sit in his garage, undrivable and nearly unrecognizable for the better part of the next three years. Then the boy told me his brother had sold it, still in pieces, to some guy. I was never even given the chance to get it back.

While this devasted me for some time, I had made my peace with the situation. I was never to see my car again. I sold it for a computer and in that moment turned into everything I never wanted to be when I was in high school, when I let a car define me.

It was quite the shock when that car showed up last Saturday in a garage filled with my parents and in-laws.

To be continued...