I think we may go up to Max Myers and bring the diesel home today, sort of like bringing home a dear family member from a stay at a rehabilitation facility. It is big and black and a 1981 Oldsmobile my father got when Quentin was born . . . because, as he told my mother, they had purchased a new car when Robert William was born.

The fellows at Max Myers have worked on it periodically during its stay, dealing with problems as they showed themselves. Problems that more or less came from not much driving time during the last couple of years of my mother’s life.

We started out not knowing if it would start. Well, actually, we started out here when it was winched out from the basement garage. Or maybe it started out when Mother was just days from dying and she said, “Well, you have the diesel.” It isn’t just a car; it was part of the time when my dad was alive and so was Miss Alice who used to nap in the backseat when my parents went in to Das Dutchman’s Essenhaus for lunch or dinner. They were one of the charter member customers, back when the place was a revived diner.

Ah, see, I am caught up in the nostalgia. Of course, the truth is it IS just a car and if it gets banged up or totaled and lets us know it is worn out, well, then that’s okay. It is not a shrine. It is the memories about it that are sacred . . . sort of. And the best part is, no matter what happens, my parents would be so pleased to see Quentin slide in behind the wheel and head off into life with it. Yes, it took some money to bring it up to speed and, gee, heck, being a diesel, coming up to speed may not be be all that fast. But, I think that’s all right. I think even my Depression Era parents would approve. Somehow that link from Mother and Daddy to Quentin is priceless –  no matter what comes after.

In the real world it’s just a car, but in that part of us that would rise above the sensible, it is a symbol of the intangible – the little blond head and the grayer ones sharing the last of a lifetime and the beginning of another, the love of reading, the love of  dogs . . .

And that first “Will it start?” Well, Brad Fisher at Max Myers told me they charged the battery and  . . . “I’m certain your folks wouldn’t have been surprised, but it turned over and started.” Of course.