Farewell, Green Car!
11 Jan 2017
As we were finalizing the steps of our move (five days away, eek!), Eric and I realized that we wouldn’t really have any more need or space for our second car. It was costing us a pretty penny to insure it, and we’d have to pay another chunk of change to have it moved (or impose so terribly on one of our parents to drive it up to Seattle for us. Four days of driving with no cruise control, whee!) As we thought it through, we reached a bittersweet decision: it was time to bid our green chariot farewell.
Why was it such a big deal? I bought this little green Honda when I was 16, brand new, from the dealership, mostly because I couldn’t find a decent and reliable used car and was likely traumatized by the woes my brother suffered in dealing with the used Jeep he had bought the year before. I went in with my dad and haggled the good haggle. I paid my $268.40 every month for four years, first out of my Wild Oats paycheck, then from my Oberlin library/tutoring/assistant teaching paychecks. I paid her off just at the start of my senior year. And after that, I worried much less about spilling my coffee.
She’s a 1999 Honda Civic. It’s now 2017. And I am 34. This car has carried me through over half my life. Every single one of her 85,000 miles was put on her by me, or some member of my traveling circus. When we were expecting Micah in 2014, we knew a two-door wasn’t going to be the best option for heavy carseats, so we bought our 2011 Accord. We just didn’t drive the green car very much at all after that–to airports, maybe, or on the rare occasion when we both needed to be somewhere at the same time. Seattle has much better public transit, and we now live in the age of Uber and Lyft for those situations. So it was time to say goodbye.
I might not have thought about writing a post like this, except that my dad just wrote one on the 20th anniversary of his white Miata. I loved reading about all the places that sweet little car had taken him. And I wanted to do the same for my little green car. I am not a person who cares too much about things (I suspect that is true for most of us), except in that they are perfect little repositories of memory. This car holds so very many.
She doesn’t have many miles for her seventeen years because I didn’t drive her much on a daily basis, except during her first year, when I drove her to White Station High School every morning, music blaring, protein smoothie in my cupholder (main ingredient: ice cream. Lolololol.) She stayed home during my first year at Oberlin, but I drove her up my sophomore year, the first of many sojourns across the 678 miles from my driveway in Memphis to campus. By the time I graduated, I had this trip whittled down to 10.5 hours, with only one stop. I know, I’m a savage. I came home every summer, most spring and fall breaks, and several Thanksgivings, including one in which I came home two days early, hid my car on a side street, and then hid in the closet to surprise my mom (my dad and I were good co-conspirators).
After I graduated Oberlin and came back from a summer in Russia, I loaded up the car and drove out to Berkeley for grad school, stopping along the way to pick up my brother in Oklahoma City (where he had arrived from Austin after a harrowing Greyhound bus ride. Thanks, brother!) We had almost zero dollars, but lots and lots of fun. In Berkeley I took the little green car across the bridge to San Francisco and up to Point Reyes, and on the weekends we explored all the little neighborhoods of the East Bay.
During my first summer in Berkeley, my brother came to stay with me while he worked at an architecture firm in the city. My brother is a very good person to have around if you like adventures. We went to visit a friend in Monterey. Then he suggested that we drive up the coast to see the pygmy cypresses near Fort Bragg, stopping along the way in Mendocino, where, to my great chagrin, my brother made me listen to the Sir Douglas Quartet’s “Mendocino,” which is, objectively, the worst song in the world (sorry, brother.) He soon redeemed himself. One day I came home from my French class, and he said, “Hey! Let’s drive up to Vancouver!” And we did! Straight up the 5 through California, Oregon, and Washington, stopping on the way home in Bend and Crater Lake, which is one the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and where we had a summer snowball fight. Good times!
The little green car ferried me all around the Bay area for seven years, during which time I finally got her California plates. Did you know that it is illegal to have a car in the state of California for more than 30 days without getting California plates? Did you know that it’s kind of complicated to change a car title (in my dad’s name, since I was only 16 when I bought it) across states? Whew, I was glad to get that resolved. After two years. Ha!
The green car drove me down to LA to visit my friend Steve, but most of her trips were local. My brother moved first to Oakland, then to San Francisco, and I’d pop over to see him. And then, happiest of happies, I met Eric. I drove over to see him as often as I could, and we took all manner of local trips: Napa, Sonoma, Half Moon Bay. We also made the HARROWING drive up to Sea Ranch to spend Thanksgiving with my family several times.
After we got married, we drove our little green car down to Pasadena, and then to Idyllwild, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and the beach. And then…our family of two grew to three, and green car’s driving days were mostly over. I hope she has many more with her new owner.
I didn’t cry when we sold her to Carmax (even though maybe I should have, given the low offer!), except at this one little moment. My whole family had been so sweet about it, including Eric, who was asking me, as we waited to sign some papers, how I was feeling. I turned to him and said, “You know, I was just thinking about who I was when I bought that car–what I imagined my life would be like, where I imagined my life would take me. And I realized that I have everything I could ever have hoped for.” It’s so true. And I’m so grateful. Farewell, green car!

Jan 11, 2017 @ 05:51:13
Oh, so lovely! Thank you, green car, for all the memories!
Jan 12, 2017 @ 11:20:21
Indeed! Many happy memories!
Jan 11, 2017 @ 08:33:56
Oh what an absolutely sweet post! So insightful. I’m glad my post inspired you to write this one. I know they are only cars but they help us collect memories as we travel through life in them. And your little green Honda girl carries memories for both of us.
I always enjoyed getting to drive her when we came to visit recalling such fond memories. I’ll miss that.
Jan 12, 2017 @ 11:26:06
I’m so glad! I tried to link to your post in mine, but for some reason it wouldn’t work. Ack, probably need to update WordPress or something! In any case, thank you for the inspiration, for helping me buy this car, and for driving it with me! Love you!
Jan 11, 2017 @ 14:25:23
That first (good) car can have an awful lot of sentimental attachment. I bought a Plymouth Horizon days after graduating high school. Not only was I attached to it for being my first new car, it saw me through most of my early dates with my wife, our college years, honeymoon, to bringing home our first child from the hospital. Not long after, we decided to give it to a friend.
When I was signing the title, our friend thought I was getting reluctant to give it away, but really I was just reflecting on what a huge part of my life was represented by that car… so much happens in those early adult years!
But then, it’s time to move on… Good luck on your upcoming move and new life.
Jan 12, 2017 @ 11:29:37
Oh, this is so sweet! It’s true, our cars see us through so much. I’ll never forget the great sense of independence my car gave me, and how I felt a little bit each time when I buckled my seatbelt that I was heading out into the big wide world to crave out my place in it. I am happy you had a friend to pass your car along to! We wanted to give ours to friends for their daughters to use when they learn to drive, but they are only 8! Probably too long for the car to sit gathering dust:) Thank you for your comment!
Feb 07, 2017 @ 08:03:54
aww such a sweet post.
loving all your throwback pics.. 16 year old you is adorable!
Feb 07, 2017 @ 09:37:25
Thank you so much! It was fun to write! Happy belated birthday to you and your sweet one!
Mar 03, 2017 @ 16:26:11
Ах! Такое уж мое везение! С мужом, подумаем переехать Сан Диего летом… надеялась тебя увидеть! Говоря–у меня немного книг Ахматовой, Маяковского, Хлебникова, и.т.д., покупала в Петре в 2002. Меня сентиментальная ценность…и я бы плакать, если они были гнить на полке, нелюбимыми и забыли. Не бы тевя их? (Kindly forgive my practicing on you…it took me an hour to figure out the structure and grammar! However, it should give you some idea of the atrophied state of my Russian!)