For the Love of the Car

So I'm not sure any of you knew exactly how much I loved my car.

Matter of fact, I'm not sure I even know how much I loved my car.

If you read the previous post you know that a tragedy struck yesterday.  But you may not know the whole story...

So my brother and I woke up one Christmas morning in high school hoping to get things like CDs and clothes and cake decorating things... When we finished opening the presents Jared and I got a little wrapped tin (like the kind for gitcards) and we opened it to find 2 KEYS!!

As we got really excited (there was never any previous talk of getting a car), really really excited, my dad said, "we made you keys to mom's van so you can drive it more!"

Really. Oh we felt horrible. Then my dad got us to go try out our new keys, and after getting way too excited about keys to mom's van we figured we probably should humor him as to not make him feel bad for not buying us a car...

And we walked into the garage to find (maybe you guessed it) THE SATURN! It had a huge red bow on it and I think I fell in love right then.

See most people wouldn't think of a 1997 Saturn SL as luxury. But it really is...except for well, Kyle and my Dad and anyone else over 6 feet tall because they wouldn't fit in it.  But it's got a CD player that my mom and dad put in....
and well, like I said it gets 35 miles to the gallon...
and it doesn't have power locks so if I lock my keys in the car twice in one morning and I accidentally forget to lock the back passenger side door, I can just open the door and get my keys out... (happened, twice)
and when everyone else is upset when their automatic windows go out, I can just use that bicep muscle and crank those windows up.

It's basic. It's made of plastic. It gets 35 miles to the gallon. And I love it.

And I had no idea how much until today.  Today I called the tow truck to take my car to the shop and when the guy showed up I met him outside.  I waited for him to hook up the chains, and I winced when they clanked against the car! I watched him lift the car up on the platform and I worried that it could fall or what if someone hit the tow truck on the way to the shop and my car got hurt?

And then I stood there and watched him drive away until I could not see him anymore.

I was like a mother sending her only son away to the war. I was like a mom dropping her baby off at daycare on her first day back to work. I was like... crazy.

I talked to the guy at the shop and I asked a million questions. What were they replacing, how would they replace it. What does compressor or PCV (yep, not PVC) mean and would my car be okay?

He told me the Saturn had a great engine. And I was actually proud.  He told me that the Saturn was repairable and a great car.  Maybe he was buttering me up, but he knew just how to do it.

And then I thought, oh my goodness, what will I even do when we have kids?!?