4.21.2016

A FAMILY PORTRAIT - 12 YEARS IN THE MAKING



I have been driving the same car for 12 years.

Every time I put gas in it, I have to reset the mileage so that I can keep track until the next fill up because the odometer works but the gas gauge quit a while ago.

The clock was right twice a day. 1:27.

The air conditioning has been measuring in celsius for years, so I always knew that 19C was a magic number for cool air on a hot California day.

The power steering would go in and out so some turns would catch me by surprise, and I'd have to muscle it with both arms like I was driving an autopia car at Disneyland.

The automatic door locks stopped working so I had to actually put the key in the door to open it.

The sunroof, that was a good one… it went from sunny to stormy in the same day. The roof was open for the Spring air to blow through as we were on the freeway. Unfortunately, the sunroof motor stopped working right as storm clouds rolled in. In what felt like a blink of an eye, I found myself driving back home with one hand on the wheel and one hand holding an umbrella over my head. The water was spilling off onto the boys, so they covered their faces with blankets. We made it as far as my parents' house, boys soaking, and sunroof still open. I could not stop laughing at the ridiculousness. We had the car shop close the sunroof, and that was the last day we enjoyed the Spring air blowing through our roof.

The trunk hydraulics, also laughable. Did you know they can go out? The trunk had to be held up with one arm while I muscled the stroller or groceries in with the other arm. Sometimes, I would forget and the door would come crashing down and eat me. Pretty sure anyone in the parking lot that saw that got a good laugh. I eventually used one of Jeff's golf clubs to start holding it up.

But despite all the "problems," I loved this car. And I felt it was always doing its best to get us from A to B. It was brand new when Jeff and I bought it, right before we got married. Little did we know then that it would eventually bring 3 babies home from the hospital over the next 12 years of our marriage.




We love you - four door, five seater, Kia Sorento. And we both cried (after we confessed to each other that we did while the other wasn't looking) when we officially said goodbye last week. I wanted to keep you, because there was no amount of money that could equal your worth of memories to us. You were the car that said "Just Married" on it. You brought home all our babies. You took us on more road trips than I can count. Including a trip up the entire coast of California - through Monterey, San Francisco, the Redwood Forest - all the way to Portland, Oregon... and back! You took us back and forth to Fontana the week Graham was diagnosed. You were there for me after my 21st birthday dinner when I had too many fruity drinks and had to hang my head out of the window like a dog while Jeff drove home. Mountain snow trips with chains on the tires to summer days at the beach. And no matter how much we vacuumed, I'm pretty sure we are sending you off with beach sand still in the trunk. Also, you get to keep my driver's license, which you ate, right in the crack between the middle console and the radio.

So many memories and emotions keep flooding my head as I type this, I don't know if I'll ever get them all down. A capsule of 12 years of our lives, forever.



// photos taken by my sis, on April 13, 2015 with iphone 6, and edited with vsco