Today I admit defeat.
Okay, maybe not exactly defeat, but it sure feels like it.
You see, after much debate, we’ve sold the Mustang. You know, the one that Kacie and I were supposed to spend the next several years restoring for her 16th birthday? The same 1966 Mustang that resulted in my starting this blog? Yeah. That one.
Maybe defeat is exactly right.
Before buying the car I’d spent a ton of time weighing the pros and cons of making a decision of this magnitude. I tried to think of everything. I thought I had it all planned out.
But who knew thirteen months ago that our little blue slice of Americana would be possessed.
Perhaps possessed is too strong of a word. Schizophrenic, maybe?
I’ve chronicled its issues with it stopping. At first the car simply wanted no part of the process. The brakes broke. Literally. We had them fixed. A few weeks later, the brakes broke again. Nothing as dramatic as the first time around, by thankfully I’d been babying her (the Mustang) because I could tell something was not right. Perhaps it was payback for my calling her a bitch the first time around. We made up. We both moved on. She ran like a dream.
But towards the beginning of summer her disposition changed. Stopping was no longer an issue. She simply didn’t want to go, or more specifically, start. It was like every day was Monday morning for her.
We replaced the battery. The alternator. The starter. Just as I was ready to break the B Word out on her again, she relented. That lasted less than a week. Three days, to be precise.
The car was always giving Traci fits. In some ways Traci was scared of the car. She knew how finicky our little filly could be, which made her timid. The car sensed this. Every time. We pushed. The car pushed back. Harder. Now that I think about it, the car was acting more like a teenager than something possessed. Having raised five kids, my mom would argue that the two are one and the same. This time the car would start but not keep running. See the correlation between teenager and schizophrenic?
Traci and I had a decision to make: how much more money were we willing to immediately pump into this car without seeing immediate results?
The practicality of owning a classic car was also becoming less and less apparent. It’d been months since Kacie and I worked on the car together. My work and school schedule just hadn’t allowed for it, and there was no end in sight. Our bedroom was turning into a surplus parts warehouse with new parts piling up in different corners, collecting dust.
We grew tired of depending on friends, family, or co-workers for rides to work when the car was out of commission. I was tired of being dropped off at work an hour and a half early and picked up an hour late because I had to wait for Traci to pick me up. Our family’s dream was turning into a nightmare, so we decided to let the car go.
Kacie wouldn’t come outside and tell her goodbye. I asked if she was sad. She said she’d wanted a convertible Mustang anyway. She didn’t look me in the eye when she said it.
Brady came out to say goodbye. He almost cried. Fitting that the two men of the house were the only ones fighting back tears as the new owners were strapping the fifth member of our family down to a trailer – guess she got her very own straight jacket after all– to haul her away.
Again I feel like I’ve failed as a dad. One more thing on a long list of things I either tried to do but couldn’t or did but shouldn’t have.
It’s like when Clark W. Griswold drags the dog to its death, wrecks the family station wagon in the desert, or drops dead Aunt Edna on his brother-in-law’s doorstop during the comedy of errors that is his family’s vacation. Why didn’t he just call it a day and drive back home to Illinois? Did pushing through at all cost make him a better dad? Was that really better than just giving up?
Thinking of this now reminds me of when I posted the question on Twitter last week asking “At what point does giving up not constitute as giving up but as finally realizing you’re outnumbered in a world full of idiots?” I’m not saying that I’m an idiot. Rather it makes me think of a response from a friend that in a nutshell said that sometimes giving up isn’t giving up as much as it is letting go.
Funny how this whirlwind of thoughts running through my mind brings me to letting go, especially considering the real reason for getting the car in the first place was because I was trying to find a way to hold onto Kacie as long and as hard as I could because I was afraid of letting her go. Not only have I been given a lesson in letting go, now I’m going to have to redesign the blog. Awesome.
Letting go 1, Brad 0
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