Remember that television show, My Mother the Car? The premise of that wacky 1966 show, which starred Jerry Van Dyke, was that the character’s deceased mother was reincarnated as a car.
Well, I have my father’s Subaru Impreza now and it’s like, well, it reminds me of My Mother the Car. Sort of.
It’s not like he’s reincarnated as the car or that there are spirits in there but there is something. When I’m in the car I feel a connection with my dad and the way he did things. Little discoveries:
–Oh, that’s where he kept that card he used to get into the garage.
–Why did he put the tire gage in that dashboard compartment? It makes so much noise when it rolls around.
–What are all those books he bought at a library sale in the back?
Truthfully, when I think of my father I don’t think of the Subaru. The car I think of is the light blue Austin Healey, which was our family car from the time I was born until I was about 8.
Now that was a great car (like the one pictured except in a light sky blue). My mother and father bought it on a trip to England in 1957. That was during what I think of as the "Two for the Road" phase of their marriage. In pictures, my mother looks very Jean Seberg with her short, dark hair amd my dad is awfully handsome with his neatly trimmed beard and tweed jacket. They drove to Italy and later shipped the car home to New York City. After a while my sister and I got too big to fit in the tiny back seat of this sporty, four-seat convertible so my father sold it.
My father didn’t have a car for years after that (we always rented). But when he got a house in Upstate, New York, he bought a few cars over the years. Finally the Subaru Impreza, considered a very good car.
On August 19th, just weeks before my father died, I was backing out of the driveway of the house we rent in Sag Harbor very, very slowly. Suddenly, there was a huge Land Rover in the rear window and CRASH: the right rear tail light of the Subaru was SMASHED. The Land Rover had no damage whatsoever.
It was like hitting a brick.
The car looked awful and I cried like a teenager. "My dad is going to kill me." All the way home on the Long Island Expressway I was in a panic about telling my dad.
Finally when we got back to the city, I nervously called my dad and started to tell him the story "Don’t tell me now, I’m not feeling well," he told me.
Phew, that was easy I thought to myself.
When I got to his apartment he didn’t want details. The next day he started to ask questions and worried about his insurance. He wanted me to get some estimates for repairs. When I called from ABC Collision with a rough estimate of $2,000 he said angrily, "Are you kidding? Leave. Go to another place."
Hugh was out of town at the time and my father told me to wait for him to get back (my father was a bit of a sexist about women drivers). "Let him take care of it," my father told me.
I hated to bother him with the details of this silly fender bender when he wasn’t feeling well. But on some level it was a welcome distraction for both of us. Something to talk about other than symptoms, medications, chemotherapy. And yeah, we had a couple of fights about it. He was a little patronizing, "Why were you driving the car anyway? Your sister is a better driver."
Not long after that he went into the hospital for two weeks, where we talked about it a couple of times. My father died at home on September 7th.
I couldn’t even think about the car for a while. Finally I called the insurance company and they sent an adjuster to look at the car. The guy called and said that the car was a "total loss."
Total loss. I know about loss. My father died just weeks ago. What did the guy mean?
He meant that cost to repair the car (estimated at $3,000 by ABC Collision) exceeded the value of the car. He offered me a check and said that the insurance company would be happy to take away the car.
Something about it felt wrong. We wanted to keep the car and we believed that we could have it fixed for less money. Finally, we were referred to a collision place on Sackett Street called Gino’s. They were able to fix the car for $750. They did a very good job for the money. We didn’t want a new paint job and as extensive a repair as ABC suggested.
We picked up the car on Friday at 5 p.m. My father’s car. I am happy to have it. The car is now parked on Third Street in front of our apartment building. My father the car. It makes me happy just to see it.
