Microwunderkammer

 Parental Artifact #12: a 2004 Toyota Prius.

It amazes me how much our cars can both mirror and shape our stories about our selves. A family’s story can be told in automobiles, in chapters of make, model, and mileage. The procession of vehicles can symbolize vigorous youth, the joys and burdens of family, the midlife crisis, and the compromises of older age. The cars can also illustrate family dynamics, for good or ill—and this is entirely a phenomenon of the last few generations: my grandfather saw the first automobile to roll through his hamlet in the Russian Empire, and the Orthodox Priest tried to exorcise it as it was clearly the Devil’s work.

Sixty years after that, but before I was born, my family lived in Argentina for two years, where my dad was a postdoctoral fellow with Luis Leloir. At that time, every male Argentine who sat in the driver’s seat of any car saw himself as the dashing Formula One champion Juan Manuel Fangio. My parents told us lots of stories about the “assertiveness” of Argentine drivers, treating every street as Monaco or Monza. I think some of this rubbed off on my dad, and only slowly faded away.

My parents returned to the United States with one more child than when they left, and settled down in Los Angeles, city of cars. Before I was born the next year, they purchased a VW camper van. This underpowered shoebox definitely tempered my dad’s internal Fangio. It was a good vehicle for who we were at the time. Over thirteen years and three engines, it took us all over the West on camping trips, hauled garden and home supplies, and ferried me and my brothers around, all while driving back and forth to USC every day. My dad personalized it: he installed a doorbell under the bumper that would make a cheerful “brrrrrrrrrrrring”, which is sometimes a more appropriate means of communication than the klaxon’s bray.

The “bus” was followed by a VW Vanagon, which mostly (if less reliably) filled the same role as its predecessor for almost a decade. When there were no longer three sons to be ferried around and taken on camping trips, it was replaced by a Ford Bronco. This would allow my parents to go camping, by themselves, in slightly more adventurous places, and I think may have helped my dad express his Fangio as he negotiated midlife. It was also, unfortunately, a horrible vehicle for commuting. As my parents aged and interest in “roughing it” waned while the need to get back and forth to work persisted, the Bronco was sold to the woman who was my grandfather’s caregiver at the end of his life, and my parents got a practical Honda Civic Wagon.

If my parents’ story were told in cars, there’s a significant chapter that exists only in fragments, like an ancient text, but is nonetheless illustrative of my parents’ life: a yellow VW Rabbit.

It seemed normal to me as a kid that my mom didn’t drive. I know my mom was in some ways quite old-fashioned. She came of age before “women’s lib,” and was accustomed to limits on life that seem absurd today. For instance, she didn’t have a credit card for a very long time, and generally preferred my dad charging things. When I was young, she mostly stayed home with my brothers and me, and because most things in our town were within walking distance, a car wasn’t necessary.

Apparently, when I was very young, she had made a bid for a driver’s license. What I remember hearing was that my dad, and his dad (the same one who saw a terrified priest attempt to exorcise an early automobile), offered to teach her—which is a circumstance absolutely fraught with peril for a relationship. I do not know if they went through with this scheme or not, but I do remember that even the discussion left lasting damage, one of the very few patches of rough water in the outwardly calm stream of their marriage.

Last year I was emptying a four-drawer filing cabinet of their financial records dating back to the late 1960’s, and to my surprise found a couple of credit card slips (from my dad, of course) and a booklet from a driver training class for Irma Appleman. It was not the whole course, and I know nothing of the circumstances surrounding it. I just know that it didn’t go to completion, and my mom never got a license.

Years later, having three sons in elementary school, junior high school, and high school, my parents again considered the notion of my mom learning to drive and getting a second car. By this time, it was also much more normal for a wife to have her own wheels and the liberty to drive (if it is liberty to be constantly schlepping children to this or that appointment!). I remember my mom going far enough along in this idea to posit that she’d want a cute, yellow VW Rabbit.

I think the trauma of driving lessons from my dad (still somewhat possessed by the spirit of Fangio), and a bit of timidity about asserting herself in a domain that she still viewed as masculine, ultimately prevented this from happening. And so, until the last time she rode in a car, my mom sat in the passenger seat—in the bus, in the Vanagon, in the Bronco, in the Civic.

The last car my parents had was this Prius. The days of adventurous camping were fewer, although the car did make a few trips along the rutted dirt roads of Anza Borrego State Park and to UC Hiking Club reunions. Mostly, it went back and forth to USC, shopping, doctor’s offices, nurseries, and the like. After a couple of embarrassing mishaps as the fog of Alzheimer’s Disease thickened, my dad laid to rest the spirit of Juan Manuel Fangio and didn’t drive any more. I don’t think he was upset about it; I honestly don’t think he remembered driving, other than a sense that he had to be somewhere else but couldn’t figure out how to get there. Duva and I bought the car in 2011—my dad’s writing and signature on the transfer is feeble—years after my dad’s drivers license had expired.

The Prius has served us well, and marks a chapter in our life. Duva has used it as a commuter. It has been a trouper on long drives to Los Angeles and back. When we lived in Sacramento, it took us skiing and biking all over. It has carried dozens of goats for us, new arrivals to the farm and those we have sold. A couple of weeks ago, as Duva was driving to work, she swerved to avoid a deer that leapt into the highway. As she did so, a second deer walked into the road. Duva was unhurt. The deer died. So, too, did the Prius. After a minute the electrical systems shut down and the car was inert. The insurance company says it is a total loss, and so we have accepted an inadequate-seeming check and are using it to buy about a tenth of a new car.

Those possessions of my parents that have become mine evoke a wide range of emotional responses: mild appreciation, nostalgia, wonder, historical reflection, aesthetic awe, gratitude and more. I don’t like cars. I tolerate them for their utility. However, I find myself more than a little surprised that the loss of this car is causing me sadness. There’s the loss of a familiar object, but there’s also the abrupt severing of a direct tie to an object that carried some of my parents’ identity. The cars in our life are like chapters in our story, and this chapter in our life is over and we move on to the next one. But, in my parents’ story of their life, as told in cars, this is the end of the book.