End of an Era

Having wrung every last mile out of our 2001 Saturn SL2, Tyler and I sold the thing yesterday.


I cried. While it is very much like me to cry, the moment was still significant.

I bought that car in 2003, when I was living in Washington Heights, NYC. I hadn't driven a car in three and a half years and I was moving to Provo to start law school at BYU. I took the subway out to Brooklyn and bought this one from two Hasidic Jewish men. 

My friend Erin Pike flew back to the city and drove it home with me. I got a mammoth speeding ticket in New Jersey. We stopped in Texas. Flew a helicopter over the Grand Canyon (Erin! The memories)!

I drove, in the dark, to my first law school final in it, listening to Shania Twain sing "don't let it get to you, c'est la vie" and fighting off abject despair.

I dated Tyler in it, driving back and forth between Salt Lake and Provo.

We got married and took our honeymoon road trip in this car, listening to a Harry Potter book and seeing the Grand Canyon, San Antonio, and New Orleans.

We squeezed a car seat into it, then Tyler drove it after we bought a bigger one for me and the baby.

It gave me an appreciation for my husband, driving it, horrible as it was, to campus every day, regularly parking next to nicer cars driven by 20 year olds.

Tyler drove it for eight years. We never spent more than $200 on repairs for it. I feel like it was our peppy little buddy, making life easier for us in the ways that it could.

Moving from New York. Law school. Dating. Marriage. Moving. Child, child, child, child.

I was so glad to see that car go! But the time it was with us - the hardest and happiest of my life. That time is what our little Saturn represents to me, so I'm going to say thank you.

Thanks, little buddy.



Comments

  1. This could have been my post exactly! Well, sort of. Dan is still driving our Saturn that I bought in 2003 when I was single. I am beyond ready for him to ditch it and purchase a car that doesn't rattle your teeth out of your head, but it will be sort of sad when it happens. The kids are looking over my shoulder at the pictures on your blog and saying, "That looks like dad's car!" Parting will be sweet sorrow.

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  2. It was sadder than I thought it would be. Hoodvto hear from you, though. We would both love to be sitting in Dan's gospel doctrine class.

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