Selling Off an Old Car, or Hoarder Relief

I’ve been on a mission the last couple of years to de-clutter my life. I have sold off and given away parts, collectibles, and vehicles in order to simplify and focus more closely on a few projects. Overall the process has been successful but bittersweet.

So it was a no-brainer when I tried to move a 1993 Sentra out of the shed this fall and the tires fell apart from sitting so long. The Nissan had to go! This would be an easy one. This is not a car I have any interest in working on. It isn’t fast or sexy or cool. So I put it up on Craig’s List and sold it off. Nothing to it. I opened up a bay in the shed, one less thing on the list of gotta-do-something-withs. Done is done and done is good.

Except.

As the new owner loaded the little Nissan up in the trailer I started to drift. This had been my daughter’s first car. Her aunt and uncle gave it to her when she was 15. The midget and I flew out to the west coast and drove the gutless little wonder home to Wisconsin. That was the last time; hell, probably the only time I spent that much one-on-one time with my little girl. We drove and we talked. We talked about cars and the future and music and boys. We stayed in seedy motels and ate delicious road food with no concern for heart disease or cholesterol counts or what  mama would say. This was a designated no franchise trip where we couldn’t stop anywhere with a name we recognized. Everything was an adventure.

The car was older and had a lot of miles but it was mint. Uncle Dave is fanatical about his cars and it showed. My Angel loved her little -San. She learned to drive a stick shift in this car. She learned to get to work and school on time without mom. She learned to speed when she was late for curfew. She grew up in this car, from a promising and challenging teen-ager to a confident and capable young woman.

The little -San lived through one major accident and several smaller miscalculations before it was replaced with a safer, more modern car near the end of the chicklet’s high school career. It sat indignantly in my shed while Super-Star went off to college and then to grad school. There have more and better cars since then but -San is the one in my mind that hauled my little soccer ninja pre-teen into that that mystery know as woman.

So, as I watch that trailer carry -San off down our dirt road I kind of miss having it around, like I miss having my Angel around. But the world moves on, and I’m OK with that. It’s just a little dust in my eyes, that’s all.