Pianos

Go ahead and giggle as you look at her.  Leaning a little to the left, one headlight a bit crooked, small dents in both sides of the hood's front corners.  Walk around the driver's side and notice the mangled door lock where someone tried to crowbar their way into her, the busted up driver's side rear hub cap.  The driver's side mirror has been replaced three times, the passenger's side window has been busted once, and the driver's side front strut was snapped in half once.  All damages that happened while I wasn't even in the vehicle (except the right side hood dent).  That poor abused car is my best friend.

She's taken on somewhere around 65,000 miles since I bought her 3 years ago.  Pretty impressive for a car that often sits idle for weeks and, on a few occasions, months at a time.  I'd buy her all over again if I could and I'm holding on until she just can't keep up with me any longer.

I've somewhat lost track of time but I got the car in early December three years ago.  That would be December of '09 right?  Dad had been gone going on 11 years and mom was packing up 30 years of our lives in the 2-story beige colonial with brown shutters to ready it for sale.  Tensions were high between my mother and all four of her daughters.  None of us could get along for even just a meal.  I was living part time in 3 different homes, in 3 different towns. It was the end of my couch surfing homeless days. 

That was the summer I hopped in that car and we took our first, most wonderful road trip.  Philadelphia to Indian Rocks Beach, Fl.  Just me & my Saturn with no ac and every cd I owned.  And peace for nearly 2 months.  I spent all but three days of that two months completely alone.  I remember about 6 days into the trip my phone rang and it was the first time I had spoken to a human being since I checked into the cottage a week prior.

Gloriousness!

That is what life is all about.

"I hope you haven't been doing much highway driving like this."  My hub assembly was completely fucked up.  My tire could have flown off the car at any moment.

Well, I'm pretty sure it was okish enough for my road trip to the Carolinas last summer.  Of course, that was after the time Jose cut me off, slammed on his brakes, lost control of his blue Blazer and took out the passenger side front corner of my car which could have been when the hub assembly was initially damaged.  But since the noises started.... eh, just three 130 mile trips into Maryland.... oh yeah, and the drive on I-95 every day to and from work.  Oh, and the 43 miles to my sister's house I made on many occasions.  Oh, and two or three trips out to Telford to hang with the beautiful MissRose.

I still owe $60 on those repairs and I don't have the money to pay it.

I remember the drive to Florida.  The rains in Georgia nearly killed me.  I hadn't driven through visibility like that since the nighttime October drives through the Great Smoky Mountains.  Tori kept me company and I had all the time in the world.  I've been lucky to have had an incredible amount of freedom over the past decade.  Freedom to do what makes me happy.  Freedom to be myself.  Freedom of time but not of money which is better than the reverse in my mind.  I had plenty of everything I needed.

Certain loves have left my life over the past three years.  Sometimes I miss them terribly.  Sometimes I don't give them the teeniest thought.  Sometimes, like now, they get a thought, a three quarter smile, and then go back into the cobwebby corner where they live until I need to borrow a memory, laugh, or break my heart.  Tonight I don't need those memories, tonight it's time to face forward. 

Right now I'm sitting at my kitchen table waiting for the last good light bulb in this apartment to burn out.  I'm clothed in multiple layers and wearing a winter hat, fingerless gloves and scarf, and wrapped in a blanket I use rarely because I refuse to ever wash it because its as soft as clouds.  I'm cold and I'm hungry.  But I'm getting by just fine. 

I pull my old cherry colored Samick out of the cobwebby corner.  She was pretty enough and she played nice enough.  She was brand new when I brought her home.  Home in Nashville.  Home in Antioch.  Home in Horsham.  Then they took her home and I never saw her again.  I don't miss her.  I just miss having her kind near me at all times.

I need little more than a date with my 990 pound friend in that big empty auditorium though I'll certainly settle for any of his smaller siblings.  No wonder I'm lost, I haven't had a heart to heart with myself in longer than I can remember.  I think it was maybe Goose Creek, South Carolina.  When was I in a place called Goose Creek?  I think it was a dream a lifetime ago.  A lifetime when it was warm and I wasn't here.

The excitement is starting to dance in my belly a bit.  "This is our year" MissRose constantly reminds me.  I need her constant reminders.  And from that cobwebby corner I see a shadowy form jumping up and down and laughing.  "Extraordinary lives don't just fall into peoples laps.  You have to take risks and make stupid choices."