I will miss you Camry

I will miss you Camry

There are happy days and sad days. There are exciting days and there are dull days. There are days when the heart beats faster in anticipation and there are days when the mind clings on to the past. There are days when minutes fly faster than you can count and there are days when the clock seems to have stopped.  There are days when new things arrive, full of dreams and promises and there are days when old things remain even after they have left; memories intact. 

Now wouldn’t it be simpler if all these days came to us one day at a time? But, they don’t. They come to us bundled up in disguise. Happy and full; sad and restless; eager and dull; rolled up as one. And it is only when night falls and the day ends that we realize the enormity of all that happened in one single day. A seemingly simple addition makes life more comfortable than expected. An inevitable act of deletion hurts more than anticipated.

Yesterday was one such bittersweet day. We let go of our old car to make way for a new van. The thrill of the arrival of a new bigger 4 wheeler sent the kids into a frenzy as their Dad proudly pulled it into our parking lot. For me, it came with a tinge of sadness.

You see the Camry was much more than just a car for me, it was my step outside home, my passport to freedom and the only mode of transportation in a place where you needed to drive to get a gallon of milk. The Camry was also the carrier in which I gave my driving test and then and refused to drive for nearly 3 months after getting the license.

The off white Camry with its leather seats and tinted glasses didn’t look its age at all; In fact it looked sleeker than it actually was!

Together, we took baby steps on curvy paths and icy roads, the driver more scared than the car. We dropped our first born to school on her first day in this very car and tears blinded my vision as we left her in charge of somebody else, for the first time ever.

My first car saw us though many things. Bad weather, library visits, mid-night drop offs, medical emergencies, 10^th anniversary and a move across the country. Not even once, did it let us down.

I suppose it shouldn’t be so surprising that I miss my Camry today even when the trade in is a shiny new minivan. I know, the old always has to make way for the new but we have yet to make some wonderful memories in the car that arrived, till then, I will hang on to the ones I already have.

The Camry was special and will always be, but then, isn’t that true for all first things in life?