Farewell, my steady

She named herself, really. Or, maybe I should say the State of California named her. In any case, my 1993 Honda Civic, bought brand new and driven off the lot late in the evening after several hours of negotiations, came to be called Ema. Her license plates arrived in the mail and declared in bright blue -  196 EMA.

I recently posted about Ema on Facebook and one of my colleagues said, "Hey, I get that feeling you were talking about, I anthropomorphize my cars, too." Getting attached to our stuff, naming our vehicles, that's a relatively common trait for Americans, or maybe most humans. But 21 years later, when I examine the depth of feeling I had for Ema, it's curious and fascinating. You might argue it's alarming, but I never felt odd about giving life and personality to my car. Thanks in part to my friends and family who regularly referred to Ema, instead of the Civic or your car, and often asked after her health.

Ema was my steady, the one thing that stayed constant in two decades of frequent moving and inordinate loss. Less than a year after I bought her, my apartment was burglarized and I lost nearly everything I owned. They even took blankets and bottles of wine. In a late September afternoon of 2002, I sat stunned on a low cement wall, across the street from the apartment building where I had moved about three weeks earlier. The building was engulfed in flames, firefighters were swarming, and I was trying to formulate thoughts. "Well, I grabbed my backpack and my cat, I think that's all I really need." Then I looked up and saw Ema. She was nearly boxed in between firetrucks, terribly close to the building turning to ash, and I jumped into action. "Can I get her out of the way!?" I knew I had her keys because I always kept them in my backpack.

I lost things Ema carried for me. She was broken into three times, though stuff was only taken twice. The final two times it was clear the thieves were looking for the removable faceplate of a sweet stereo that had been a birthday present just months before. Long before moving to Spokane, I had made it a habit to leave very little in my car, and so the items were trifles. And, of course, they didn't find the faceplate. Why have that kind of stereo if you're not going to carry it with you?

Once, on an April evening, I even lost Ema. She was gone, taken, stolen from the spot I had parked her that morning in a bus Park and Ride lot. The sympathetic police officer who took the report assured me she'd likely be found within three days. And she was. Filthy, smelling of cigarette smoke, littered with Charleston Chew wrappers and an empty pop can, and drained of gas, she was found abandoned on a neighborhood street.

Mostly, I consider myself a person not attached to things, and without the need for a lot of stuff, feelings certainly fostered by the ongoing loss. Yet I notice that the things I do have, I am fiercely loyal to and protective of. Thus, when last year it hit me that Ema was 20 years old, and that I should consider the possibility it was time to update my wheels, I got a lump in my throat. Tears were dangerously close to the surface.

Then, last month, as Ema neared her 21st birthday, I knew. It was time and I was ready. We spent another four weeks together and just this past Thursday we bid each other farewell. It felt right, good even, to have the strength to let her go.