The Car that waited

After all these years, My El Camino is finally legally back on the road.

And maybe I’m being sentimental.
But sitting in that driver’s seat felt like coming home to a part of myself I didn’t realize had gone missing.

That car holds chapters of my life the way old houses hold echoes.

Late nights wrenching in my parents’ driveway.
The hairpin near friend Bill’s place I always tried to take a little faster than sense advised.
The happy night cruises.The angry ones.
The street races in Boston, Worcester, Providence, Philly, New York, D.C., the places we shouldn’t have been going the speeds we definitely shouldn’t have been doing.

Then the heartbreak.
The day the motor blew. Again
The long stretch of quiet where the car sat patient while life moved on without it.
The rage of being legislated out of ever driving it again in the state I lived in.
The sinking feeling every time I looked at it and knew I couldn’t give it what it needed.

I’d get bursts of motivation, real ones but it’s hard to fight for something you’re not allowed to touch.
So it sat.
And waited.
And somehow never felt like it gave up on me.

We moved

And now…
Now she’s alive.
Whole. Well.. Wholeish
Breathing again.

And so am I.

Some cars aren’t just machines.
Some cars carry the versions of ourselves we thought we’d lost.
They wait for us to catch up.
And when they finally come back to life… we do too.