Hurtling down the interstate on the way to Florida, we passed a car that looked just like mine. It was a wide, older-model white Oldsmobile. It was filled with people, and the back end seemed to be riding low.
We slowed down to take a look.
What kind of people drive a car like this, I wondered.
I mostly see women in their 70s and 80s behind the wheel of this model. And, in fact, my car had been owned by an 80-year-old -- my mother.
The car in question on I-75, however, was driven by a middle-aged man in a baseball cap. His passengers were four shirtless teenage boys. Somehow, we lost them on the highway – and any story we might have made up about them.
But the facts of my car are this (since you asked). It was manufactured in 1994, christened the Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra and was owned by my mother until she died in 1999. It has deep burgundy upholstery, anti-lock brakes, a tape player and a six-year-old chewing gum wrapper in the ashtray.
My mother would never have maintained it in the fashion that I do. She would not have left crumbs from large Flying Biscuit muffins strewn across the front seat. If the left front hubcap had fallen off, she would have replaced it. (I hear you can get plastic hubcaps from Wal-Mart.) Had she backed into a pillar in the parking deck at work, as I did, she would not have left the driver-side mirror permanently stuck at a crazy, unusable angle.
About a year ago, the armrest inside the back right door fell off. I put it in the trunk. When my children’s friends get in the car, they are confused sometimes about how to close the door. I don’t know myself, since I never ride in the back seat of my car. (I think you put your fingers in a hole and pull.)
The car drives well, in spite of various cosmetic deficiencies. It floats down the street in a royal way. My Favorite Mechanic is ... a Woman maintains it. It can carry six people with ease.
About a month after my mother’s death, when I brought the car from Selma to Atlanta, the battery died. My Favorite replaced it. A week later, my mother’s watch, which I had kept, stopped ticking permanently. Don’t ask me about this. I have no answers.
But I am happy to keep driving the car. It hauls children around, floats down to the Majestic for breakfast, takes me to work downtown, carries me back to Alabama for visits – her car, my car, the Mama-mobile.
Comments