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Even At the End of the Road, I Just Can’t Let Go of My Car
I usually drive cars for 10+ years so it can be hard to say goodbye.
The first car I ever drove was my mother’s 1988 gold Volvo 240 DL sedan. That car was a TANK. You could feel it struggling to accelerate onto the highway and it guzzled gas. Yet its solid heft provided a reassuring sense of safety, which is why my parents bought it and let my brother and me learn to drive on it.
My subsequent cars are always compared to that Volvo sedan. It will forever remain special to me. Even though I only drove it for two years, it was the first car I ever drove so it’s more meaningful to me than subsequent cars that I drove for 10 years or more.
I saw a Volvo 240DL sedan drive by me the other day and literally did a double-take. It looked exactly like my mom’s Volvo sedan (and it was even gold!). It’s 2021 — that car must be at least 30 years old!
I know it couldn’t have been my mom’s car, though. She sold it to her older brother’s family after they immigrated here from Taiwan in the mid-1990s. My younger brother and I were both away at college and my parents didn’t need a third car. They also didn’t want to send it to UCLA with me or UC Berkeley with my younger brother.
