the ending of an era.

I haven't allowed myself to get ridiculously sentimental about very many things throughout this process, because believe me....I could find a way to cry about just about everything right now....like when I loaded my jewelry polisher into the moving van, knowing I wouldn't see it again for two years, or when I was sitting outside with my dear friends last Saturday and in the midst of the laughter could have broken down into a fit of sobs just knowing how much I would miss out on over the next two years.
But I don't.
Until now.  
I've allowed myself this one pass, because yesterday I had to say goodbye to something that has been the one constant in my life since I was 20 (11 years for those of you keeping score).  I said goodbye to my dear 1996 Honda.
Trust me, I know it is ridiculous to be so upset about a car - especially a car I've barely driven over the last three years.  I mean, it's just this unfeeling thing that can't love me back.
But it's the unfeeling thing that:
My parents made me buy one summer when my black Corsica stranded me one too many times.
I drove all over northern Michigan with my two dear friends that summer we worked at a camp and used it to escape.
Drove me to my wedding.
Moved me out to Central Illinois.
Then drove me home to Ohio many times to visit my parents.
Had a CD player I used to learned Portuguese.
My brother crashed into our barn when I asked him to park it, and he told me he "knew" how to drive a stick shift.
Served as our only car for the first 2 years of our marriage.   
Dustin would pick me up from work in, and my coworkers and I would all watch him from the window as he would check tire pressure, and then correct it furiously with a bike pump.
I thought was the coolest car around 11 years ago.
I still think of fondly.

I've laughed in that car, cried in it, and even yelled in it.  

So yesterday before the young teenage girl that was buying it, came to get it, I took it out for one last drive.  I cracked open a Diet Coke, and rolled the windows down (and not just because the air doesn't work).  I filled it up with premium gas (don't tell my husband), took it through the automatic car wash (the most expensive one of course), and even made a mix CD of my favorite tunes ever played in that car that I then popped in the CD player so that it wouldn't miss me while we were apart.

Don't get me wrong.  I know that it's just a silly car.  A "thing".  But I think what I'm sad about isn't the car itself, but what it represents.  This was one of my last connections to a time when I was a child - completely dependent on my parents and the adults around me.  Time keeps moving on, and this one last constant - I finally had to let it go.  

The Honda driving off into the sunset.

Of course, my youngest brother Isaac pointed out that Dustin has been wearing the exact same Cubs shirt since before we've met, so I've still got that.