a woman once told me that there is a correlation between your automobile and your state of life...like car trouble might represent emotional trouble, a broken heart, or a stall in your progress...of course, being the omen loving girl that i am, i latched on to that. and ever since, any time something happened to my car, i looked at what was going on in my life to find the meaning.
i've never had a new car or even a newish car. in fact, i've only had two cars in my entire life...the first was a toyota tercel and so is the second. (i did drive a scooter in my younger days)...the teenagers i worked with used to call my first car a "bucket". that's slang for pitiful, something they'd be embarrassed to drive... but i wasn't. it was comfortable and paid for and started every morning like clockwork. once it was even stolen and the guy drove it until it ran out of gas. then he abandoned it. i got it back. no one wanted it but me. eventually it was time to let go, and mitchell and i found the next one on craigslist about 8 years ago. it was a 96 and had about 90,000 miles on it. we drove that car back east, then to canada, and then back to san francisco. and that's what i was driving this morning.
when i first got the mets diagnosis, i played a game in my head about the mileage. at 10,000 miles a year, which is my average, i wanted to live to see the 200,000 mark. i figured that would give me about 8 years, which at the time sounded very good, and very far away.
in june there was that drunk driver accident, and my car was pretty beaten up. after the insurance company saw the damage, they determined that whatever they would pay out would be worth more than the car itself. they called it salvage, but said that it was still legal to drive it...it wasn't worth anything anymore...at least not to them...but it is to me...it still runs... okay, it looks like hell, but it starts every morning. which brings me to this morning and what i was thinking while driving it.
i was acutely aware of the similarities between my car and my body. there's certainly a lot of structural damage, and it sure doesn't look very good. i don't know how long either will last...at any time it or i could die. i can't afford a new one, and probably wouldn't buy one even if i had the money. i could get another old clunker, but what about my goal...200,000 miles. each day it's another crapshoot...and i'm going to ride it out for as long as possible.
i have a handicapped card, which i got when i started radiation. it made parking and staying in one spot as long as necessary so much easier. i used to feel guilty about it. it doesn't help that mitchell has strong feelings about the rampant misuse of them (i know he's right)... but i've accepted my selfish flaw in that department...one of the rare benefits of cancer...anyway, the latest card i have expires in june of 2011...from day one, i hoped it would expire before i do.