It was the old truck that finally got me. I was fine moving out of our old house to move permanently to the lake. Its rooms were empty now. I noticed UPS was already leaving packages to the new owners as though I had never been there. Enough time had passed that I was able to thoughtfully process leaving behind a place where my boys had spent much of their childhoods: the 200 hundred year old trees that had dutifully served as their bases for endless rounds of baseball games, the brook we had discovered our first week after clearing the overgrown vines above it, only to spend the next ten years jumping across it’s merry waters. On the last day, I took a picture of my big boys producly standing in front of the treehouse my husband had so lovingly built by hand as soon as he came home from night shifts working at the hospital. I didn’t event cry. We were now in a new place we loved. We still were all together. Life was good.
After one last ride on the zip line my son said ” This house has been such a great home. It’s been so good to us.” (Leave it to a child to sum up a moment more eloquantly than an adult ever could.)
But it was the sight of that forlorn black pick up truck awaiting to be picked up by the public radio donation center that suddenly ripped thru me like a lightening storm. That truck was bought long ago for a song- Eric needed it for endless trips of clearing brush on the property as well as trips to the dump (and of course he just wanted a pick up truck). The local garage guy warned him it wouldn’t last more than a few weeks but here we are years later and it still does. I remember the boys- so little- sitting cozily in its back cab- cramming Saturday morning donuts into ther mouths with pretend tool belts while Eric blasted an old Johnny Cash casette because the radio never worked. I know more family days are ahead but these magical ones of young family life are undeniably now passed.
I never cared for the truck much then. I’d secretly wipe down its chaotic interior and try to doll it up but there was no fighting it. It was the boys’ zone and I eventually succumbed to its inevitable presence. Now the idea that it will soon be no more than scrap metal is suddenly and irrevocably breaking my heart.