Trade-in Transition: Mom Looks at a New Role as Kids Depart

My son traded in our SUV this week, my hand-me-down to him. With over 113,000 miles, this vehicle carried the fragrance and markings of 14 years of use: sweaty bodies ported from games and practices, tan leather worn to a gray patina, dark spots on the ceiling from a tell-tale chocolate milk explosion. The car represents a chapter of my life come to closure, the 24/7 mother stage. My son is a junior in college, my daughter leaving in a few days for her freshman year. They’ll need me, but no longer in the same way.

Source: Taken by my brother Tom at Bandelier

For the most part, this SUV maroon monster stored memories I treasure: hikes to Tsankawi and Bandelier with a stop at McDonalds, weekly trips to the Dallas Zoo, The Science Place, The Dallas Arborteum or Nature Center. This SUV ran carpool for three different schools which some days felt like an intimate touch point and other days like shackles. We traveled to the doctor, Discovery Zone, to Star Wars, the dentist and both ballparks in Arlington. This vehicle held car seats and costumes, boyfriends and girlfriends.

My SUV’s fresh leather seats gave a soft cushion for my 90-minute solo drive to nowhere in August of 2001. The maroon monster got us places, but failed in the destination I wanted the day of my suicide attempt. When it failed to oblige, I slammed the door and spit out an expletive. I was angry. My failure did not yet seem a lucky break.

After the attempt and my rebound from depression, it never occurred to me to sell the SUV. I’d been thrown by disease, but was far too practical to take the financial hit on a just-off-the-lot trade-in. Instead, I lived in the shell of the worst moment in my life and filled it with new memories. By the time my son needed a car, he couldn’t care less about what happened in August a decade before. He needed wheels. That near death experience faded in the face of a million other moments: some good, some bad, but all alive.

This summer, on vacation in Australia with my daughter, we met new people on each stop of a three-week trip. I didn’t mention that I was a writer. Inevitably that job description snowballs into answers that take me back to that day in the garage in 2001.

Source: Julie K. Hersh

I’m not in denial of the experience or my depression. My life, however, has held much more than its worst day. Instead of repeating that day like a flash headline on CNN with every new person I met, I told them about the other things I did in my life. I chatted about the Dallas Theater Center and convinced as many Australians as I could that Dallas is so much more than the death place of JFK, the home of the Cowboys and JR. Like me, I feel like my city has been type cast and ready for a new role.

Perhaps I can take a lesson from a worn-out, well-loved Escalade. Our experiences, bad as they may be, define us, but are not our definition. They can be a springboard or a plank. It is how we step forward that determines who we will be.

Source: Julie K. Hersh

For more information about Julie K. Hersh or Struck by Living, check out the Struck by Living website.