This Is Not About a Car

Walking between rows of sparkling luxury vehicles in the used-car lot at a local Lexus dealer, I exclaim to my son: “If each of these cars were a person, we would be standing in a crowd of white privileged people who are country club members, preoccupied with all things comfortable, running late to meet their friends at the golf course.”

“Well, lucky for us these are cars and not people,” he responds dryly. “And by the way, if you think you can hide the fact that you’re white and privileged driving any car — even an old Dodge Dart or an Edsel, you’d be mistaken.”

I knew it had been a good idea to ask my wise 38-year-old son to meet me on the afternoon when I set out to look for a good low-mileage used car.

In the service of transparency, I drive a 2008 Lexus SUV. I bought it used in 2013. It has been nothing short of a perfect car for me. It supports my lousy scoliosis-ridden back; it is the right height for me to get in and out of it. And it never breaks. I have only replaced the tires — not even the brake pads or the fuel pump. It is never in the shop other than for oil changes. One of life’s biggest sinkholes of time, in my mind, is waiting for cars to be fixed — waiting to find out what has broken, what is leaking, what is making that grinding noise. And then there’s waiting for the estimated cost of repair. Because you have no choice, you agree to the price and leave the car there for days or even a week while they wait for a part or who-knows-what. My car has spared me this situation for eight years. And I regularly whisper thank you to it.

I am 72 years old and in about 10 minutes, I will be 73. Since I usually drive a car for 8 to10 years, this may well be the last car I buy. I figure that by 83, my son (who will then be almost 50) might be asking me to relinquish my car keys. When that day comes, I am promising myself that I will be compliant rather than belligerent, that I will be graceful instead of outraged, that I will go gently into that smaller world.

When a person turns 50, friends say: “50 is the new 40.” And this happens again at 60: “60 is the new 50.” But when we turn 70, if anyone dares to use this annoying platitude, we know they are flat-out lying — or feebly trying to trick us into believing that we are not growing old and that maybe death can be altogether avoided. The truth is that 70 is the age we remember our grandparents being — and it makes no sense that we are as old as they were. We cannot avoid the fact that someday, sooner than later, we will pass on. And if we have had luck maintaining good-enough health, it is an age that allows us a precious vantage point: our aches and pains are mostly manageable, yet we cannot deny the direction the whole shebang is heading. We are not going to become more spry, more energetic, more nimble or younger — even if we eat well, get exercise, meditate and do crossword puzzles. If we can manage to be emotionally graceful and not rail against the natural tides nor deny the inevitable diminishment of physical vitality, we can have a meaningful ride to the end of the line. This is an age that asks us to confront some serious realities: that our bodies and minds are wearing out and that this is the time to get real about what we want to do with whatever time is left and about making peace with what life has asked of us.

Back to the car. I ask myself: why now, as I am about to enter my 74th year, am I looking for a low-mileage car with a hybrid engine and updated safety features? The answer is simple. I still have places I want to see. During this long year of pandemic isolation, night after night, I watched the national and local news (plus, Rachel Maddow), and I read two newspapers each day. I saw maps of the United States dotted with chickenpox-looking lesions showing the number and location of COVID cases or the number of COVID deaths or the number of people in overcrowded ICUs. There were also maps of blue and red states and counties showing the near cataclysm of the 2020 election. As I stared at these maps each night, it occurred to me that I have not seen many parts of this country. I want to go to Montgomery to see the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. I have never been to Utah, to many of the national parks in the west. I want to go to Seattle, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. There is a museum in Arkansas I’d like to visit. I want to drive to Charleston, perhaps by way of the Smoky Mountains and Nashville. And if I don’t go soon, just when do I think I’ll go? When I turn 80?

I have spent the last couple of weeks doing my due diligence when it comes to the researching of this automobile purchase. Tomorrow my son will pick me up at noon and take me to a local Toyota dealership where, as they say in the biz, the car I have chosen will be “delivered" to me. I learned that this does not mean that it will arrive at my house like an order from Amazon, but rather that the dealership will have cleaned it, maybe infused the inside with some new-car aerosol spray, and brought it up front. After signing some papers and writing a large check, I will drive it off the lot. Since I have already admitted that I talk to my cars, I will be pledging out loud my devotion to it; I will declare that I will never take it for granted. And I will ask it to be good to me. I want our relationship to start out on the right foot (or tire).

No doubt, I will need to sit inside it for hours at some point, trying to learn about all the electronic features of the dashboard. Driving a newish car today is not just a matter of putting it into drive or braking to slow it down. It is about computers, safety options, Bluetoothing everything that’s not tied down. These cars beep at you if you get too close to another car. Some even take over and automatically brake if you happen to forget to do so in a tight situation. The number of things they do is nothing short of both ridiculous and miraculous. They can remember the kinds of music you like or the temperature you most enjoy in the interior. They automatically turn on the windshield wipers before you register that it’s raining; they flash the speed limit on the monitor no matter where you are in the country; they send your phone a text telling you how many miles you can go before you will need gas. I could go on (because, of course, the salesman did).

 And yes, I am aware that there are now driverless cars called autonomous vehicles. Perhaps a reflection of my age, but I find this disturbing and alarming. What exactly are human beings hoping to achieve increasing the autonomy of vehicles while their own autonomy is slipping away? Are we really wanting to relinquish our brain power to a fully digitized automobile? It’s enough of an insult that the car I am about to buy does not even give me the chance to decide to turn on the windshield wipers. In the future, what will human beings be doing while they sit in their self-driving cars? Will they nap, eat, watch movies? Will they be aware that their lives are being brought to them by way of sensors, laser beams, radar, software and algorithms?

I cannot kid myself. The car I am picking up tomorrow will be supplementing more of my functioning than I will want to admit. Yet I am telling myself that this is in the name of safety and reliability. I am comforted by the fact that no car, not now nor in the future, will be able to know if I am lying to myself or to others. No car will know my secrets, the betrayals I have suffered, the losses I am shouldering. There will never be a vehicle that will know the sadness I might be feeling as I start the car on a dreary rainy morning. This car — the one I will own by the end of tomorrow — will not know that I am now as old as my grandparents were, that I am endlessly grateful for my work, that I think about being white and privileged a lot of the time. It will never have any idea who I am, whom I love, or what is inside my soul. So I will gratefully allow it to keep me in the middle of my lane in traffic, to remind me to slow down if I am going too fast, to beep at me when I am in dangerous situations. I will take care of this car, this shiny blue enclosure on wheels. And in return, it will carry me and my curiosities to places I want to go, keeping me as safe as it can, until the day my son tells me my driving days need to come to an end. In the meantime, I will be that older woman, turning off the highway to read all the historical markers and taking in this country’s breathtaking vistas.