That Old Car Smell

After 18 years it was time for a new car.  The battery died last week; the front left tire leaks.  The intermittent wipers are REALLY intermittent, as in I have to press the connection on the windshield.  It was tired, and had, at least figuratively, that Old Car Smell.  And obviously nothing to do with Pilgrim Life.

Wrong.

But it will take a moment to explain.  Let’s start with this citation:

“We live not by things, but by the meaning of things,” said the author of The Little Prince, Antoine de St. Exupery.

For me, that old car had meaning.  Foremost, it came from my mother, who bequeathedit to me after shed died. It is a 2003 Toyota Avalon, a rather posh car that cost $32k back then. She owned it only a few months before dying, but loved it, being poor as a kid. The house was sold, the furnishings dispersed, and rightly so. But that means the car was the last physical link to her. It had meaning.

That’s why I said it had that “Old Car Smell.”

I use that term on purpose, because we all know the term, “New Car Smell.” People like that smell, but it fades as fast as newness. Over time, it takes on a new smell – coffee, candy, baby, groceries, french fries, you. The car not only takes you on the journey, it remembers the journey, the journeys. That car went to California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and more. Some bit of dust from all those places is somewhere in that car. Whether I noticed the smell or not, it was there, and kept me connected to all the days and places we have been.

Smells are things, powerful things.

We all know that. Many years ago, when I was in high school and had my first actual girlfriend, that first ski jump of love, I remember how a cold cream mother used smelled just like Jane’s. I would open it furtively and breathe in, and almost feel Jane’s cheeck against mine.

Every thing that has meaning does that, though: smells, photos, clothes. My mother-in-law wore her husband’s windbreaker for months after he died. Dad’s business card sits on my dresser. But back to the car thing.

It was a Velveteen Rabbit of a Car

You know the story and the quote. It’s about what St. Exupery said, a thing that becomes meaningful.  The most real things are those that have meaning to us.   The worn necktie, the dogeared Bible, the faded photo keeps the memory.  Things become meaningful by being part of our lives.  When I go on pilgrimage it is to recall and renew my desire to make meaning happen.  I keep a diary (posted daily on my Facebook page by the way) to fore myself to notice each day at least a little, to keep myself from thinking only the next thing matters.

Then why am I turning the car in?

Because it can hold no more meanings.  The journey we took came to an end, as it were.   As on pilgrimage I wish to hold onto each hour and day, buit also moving into the future as well, so with the car I am leaving what I have in a Palace of Memory,  so I can open new rooms in the palace.  And the wipers work better, too.

Now, into which room of the palace will I put the old car.  Why the stable of course.