Purses, Cars and Identity

9:30am                        Writing Practice                        44°  Boise

What a trip that was yesterday. I ran out of here late after having packed the car with all the stuff I'd been collecting on the back table, backed down the driveway to leave, then pulled back in to go the the bathroom. Then I dashed off down the road 20 minutes late and determined to make up the time by flying along at 80 mph. It wasn't until I stopped briefly to pee at Weatherby  that I noticed that I didn't have my purse with me. Yep, for the first time in my life, I ran off without my purse on an all day trip out of town.

I sat in my car at the rest area stunned and vibrating with the shock of it. I had had an inkling that I was going to do that as I was packing, that feeling washed over me of not having an identity. I went through a phase that felt just like that so often in 1998 just before I realized that I had to leave John, that our marriage had to end. I had dreams of losing my purse and being frantic and feeling so lost. I worried about that a lot at the time and yesterday that same feeling washed over me as I was packing the car. Before I ran off without my purse. What could it mean this time?

In the past few years, my purses have gotten smaller to the point that all I carry now is a wallet on a strap. I no longer carry around a bunch of items that I 'might' need but had really just been giving me something to put in a purse so that I wouldn't be lugging around an empty bag. I often have to check to make sure that the light wallet is still hanging there on my shoulder, I can barely feel it most of the time. Someone could easily cut the strap and it would fall away without me even noticing and I worry about that. Seems like I'm always checking to make sure I didn't forget my purse or lose it somewhere. And then yesterday I ran off without it.

Could I be going through another identity crisis now, since Stephen died? Am I finally realizing that John isn't coming home and neither is Stephen, that I'm sitting here in this house maintaining a home for them when they are both lost to me? A part of me feels the truth of this. I'm readjusting myself and who I think I am. In fact, as I typed that, I remember saying that out loud a few days ago while in my car, "Who the fuck am I?" I have lightened up on who I thought I was and now I must be ready to accept a new identity --- at least the inner me is ready, it seems. I still don't know.

Also, looking at cars brings up the same question. A car reflects who we think we are and how we feel about ourselves, at least unconsciously. I had VWs for the first few cars of my adulthood. I had my orange bug that I bought with Bob's tax refund in 1973; it was my first real car. Then he and I had a VW van and then a little red fastback when we lived in LaGrande. Then he and I bought a brand new Toyota Celica wagon in 1975. A family car. I traded that one for a little Checy Luv pickup truck in 1980, then sold it before moving to Hawaii. When I got back, I leased a new Toyota Starlet in 1981, just before I drove to California to move in with John. It was a two door hatchback with no air and was a bone of contention until we finally sold it in 1987. Then I sold our Oldsmobile Brougham for a Ford Bronco II when we lived in Burke, 1985; it was a brand new rig. Then in Florida we traded it for a new Ford Aerostar van in 1987. I loved that van! We drove it to Alameda in 1990 and then traded it for a Oldsmobile Bravada in 1992, just before we moved to Great Lakes, Illinois. That rig felt so big and clunky in the traffic and with the distances I had to drive back then, so I went out looking for a Plymouth Neon, a zippy little car, and found my Grand Am in 1994. That was 22 years ago and my identity hasn't changed since then. But now I've been looking at new cars seriously and it's causing a shifting inside of me, a slipping. I've been feeling dizzy the last few days; sometimes I have to hang on to something when I stand up from laying down as the world whirls around in my head and adjusts. It's unnerving.

 Sybil, my red Grand Am, has anchored me and kept me steady for a very long time. She was our family car, we went on trips together. Rodeo rode in that car with me and then took her last ride in it to the vets the day she had to go big night night in 1997. Stephen grew up in that car ... he was 11 years old when I bought it. He and I went on many trips together in that car. So many of my memories of being his mother are tied up there. But I'm going to keep it, I'm not letting it go, I'm just going to add a car to my life, a newer one. But I guess the very idea of buying a new car is upsetting my inner vision of who I think I am, making me reexamine myself, imagine who I want to be next and what kind of vehicle that person needs to drive. How do I see myself and who do I imagine I'm becoming?

Do I want a pickup truck? Another van? An SUV? A Fiat? A sensible car with low miles and a good price that doesn't inspire me? (I saw a silver Kia a few days ago, a 2006, great mileage, clean and neat and only $6000. I told the salesman, Mitch, that I wished I wanted it.) I can tell that deciding on this new car is going to change me somehow, fundamentally. It's going to affect my finances and I'll now have two vehicles to care for, insure and keep clean. But it will also change how I see myself, I how feel about myself, in a way the moving and changes houses never has. Cars are more personal than homes, it seems, more like body armor that one wears, not just a way to get around. Cars are personal in the same way clothes are personal, only more so.

No matter what vehicle I buy next, it will take me away from who I've been for the past 22 years --- John's wife, Stephen's mother, an independent single woman still involved with family, still maintaining relationships that are no longer there. Time to let them go so that new relationships can form if they want to. When I step away from Sybil, I step away from who I thought I was, who I really was for a time and can no longer be. When that car goes away, it will be like losing Stephen all over again ... and my mother and dad, Granny, Auntie Jan, Gerald. Sybil cradled me through all those losses, comforted me, was a witness to my wailing and screaming grief after Stephen died. Sometimes, that car feels like my only family, the rock that I've built my life around. She's been with me through it all, 251,000 miles. The only other relationships I've had longer were my parents and Stephen. Always it comes back to Stephen.

Last night on Glee, the last episode of Season One, the last song was Over the Rainbow and I sat here and cried, imagining my little boy dressed as Dorothy with his basket and a little stuffed dog running around the house in Burke, skipping. He was somewhere between age two and three (we moved into the house in Orange Park on his third birthday, 1986) and he was completely adorable, filled with light and creative ideas already.

I would give anything to change what happened to him, change into someone who was a better mother. No matter what car I drive, I will never be able to be that and it breaks my heart.