small car blues

on giving back the keys and also holding on to one of them

I traded in my car last week.

I did it and I hated every minute of it and embarrassed as I am to admit it, I cried the whole drive home. I cried even though it was a good deal and the right move and I was being proactive and did a somewhat decent job negotiating a deal (?) and still…

I cried.

I cried in front of Jonathan and three other guys at 9:08 on a Thursday in the lobby of the dealership.

well over the mileage limit

I cried like women do in the movies when they can’t cry in front of co-workers so they lock themselves in the bathroom and throw water on their faces. Tell themselves to snap out of it and get it together.

I always cry at the worst possible times. I used to be better at it. Held in my tears like I would a fart — very ladylike in public until I found myself alone at home and just fuckin LET ‘ER RIP. But something shifted in me recently. My emotions are closer to the surface now. As if hardening in other places has softened me here.

I almost always wear my sunglasses inside so it didn’t feel weird to put them on when I shook Jonathan’s hand, agreed to leave my car where I had originally parked it as he drove the new car around, pulled in next to mine like before and after pics. Same color and everything.

“Looks like the ozempic version ha ha,” I said.

I laughed at my dumb joke and they did, too, but in the salespersony way that makes you feel like an idiot for assuming they actually give a shit about you. Their smiles not unlike my sunglasses; accessories we continued to wear for the next four hours.

“I wasn’t prepared to leave my car here otherwise I would have cleaned it out first.”

''That’s okay. Take your time.”

So I opened both trunks and went to town. Removed the canvas shopping bags from the trunk and a beach umbrella. I removed the pile of volleyball parking stubs and coupons I have never used but will one day. The long lost hair ties and claw-clips and first-aid-kit and Aleve. The broken sunglasses in my glove compartment I was convinced I would have fixed and never did. A green plastic bowl cemented with uneaten oatmeal, its little pink yogurtland handle a vibrant souvenir of my refusal to throw away a perfectly good spoon. Three types of body lotions, scented and unscented, with and without SPF. Tampons, pads, clean underwear, jackets, hoodies, copies of my book completely thrashed from being repeatedly impaled by beach chairs in my trunk. Photobooth strips of my kids with their friends that they excitedly showed me before leaving them in the car and forgetting about them. The cassette tape necklace around the neck of my rear-view mirror. Forever stamps…

It’s wild how fast a family can take over a space. Turn something brand new into something lived in. But there is no faster change than the one that happens when you are suddenly packing something up. Erasing all proof of life from a space that once held so much of it.