Sometimes you get what you want but it doesn’t feel altogether good. Sometimes you get what you don’t want and, in the end, it turns out okay. This week’s theme. My dad’s birthday (97) is Tuesday and he’s decided not to renew his license. A wise man, wise move. We’d been going round and round on this topic for some weeks now, then last Sunday we made a list of the pros and cons and he decided Fine, I don’t really like driving anyway. We talked about how I would happily become his Jeeves and we’d go shopping and to Silver Sneakers (and all other places) together. “What if I’m eating breakfast and decide I want something I don’t have?” He asked. “You’ll call me and we’ll go get it,” I answered. “But what if I want it immediately and you’re busy?” His eyes flashed a little. “I don’t know what to tell you. You might have to wait?” I responded. “Or I could walk to the store,” he parried. “Sure,” I answered because sure, because right, because I knew he was saying that and both of us were aware he was just, er, saying that. Doing it would happen not-at-all.

So I took the keys, found the title, and cleaned out the glove compartment (side note: why is it called a glove compartment?). Inside I found the original 1992 manual with Tom Donnely’s name written inside. Tom was my dad’s oldest friend—he died a few months ago—and he’d given my dad the car for free back in 2008. He was a guy from back East who hated to drive but, go figure, he’d moved to Los Angeles in the 50s and, even though the city still had streetcars back then, he apparently felt he needed his own wheels. But as he got older, driving became a pain, so my dad took the train into LA’s Union Station, Tom drove to meet him and handed over the keys gratis. Then they probably went out and had steak and martinis. (Side note story: A few months ago, Dennis, my dad, and I were in Pasadena eating outside and he swept his arm toward Colorado Blvd and said, “Tom and another guy and I went up on the sidewalk around here after a night out.” This did not seem to chagrin him, rather it was just a thing that happened, and much like parents who never want to hear the stories of their kids’ brush-with-danger moments, I smiled tightly and said “huh. you guys were crazy.”) So I had a moment of weighted emotion sitting with the car’s history. The Rocket 88, as we’ve dubbed her. I still haven’t taken the golf clubs out of the trunk. Seeing those also reminds me of what has been and will not be again.

It’s not at all lost on my dad what this giving up means and there’s no way I’m going to jolly him out of the import, the life shift. But just like when Tom died, he’s processing these moments in his own way. He’ll bring it up. I’ll put my toe in. We might discuss. It’s been a few days now and we’re working toward a togetherness errand-running schedule and the like.

Wheels. The idea they exist for freedom and autonomy. Independence. I would say the American way but I don’t know enough about other places on this planet and their relationship to autos, etc. to say with certainty. My mom and dad both had 1965 Mustangs back in the day: hers white/blue interior, his black/white interior. I have great memories of riding around in both of them. She and I would head off to my grade school where she also taught, listening to KHJ pop radio. She’d sing along to “She’s Come Undone” by the Guess Who, which for some reason I thought was about a kangaroo, literally no idea why, and “Squeeze Box” by the Who, which seemed to be about an accordion. I’m sure all this confusion was helpful in my later music years. Not ever understanding exactly what Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, or Chris Cornell were getting at and refusing to ask the most annoying question: “So, what’s that song about?” because I could just remember staring dumbly at the car’s radio and making up my own stories.

By the time I’d gotten my own set of wheels, I didn’t consider them either a gift or a curse. I sure as hell didn’t treat them well. The first car, a blue VW, I sold so I could travel to England. The second was a Toyota. I didn’t fully grasp car maintenance and a flaming rod flew out the bottom of that one on my way home to Huntington Beach from LA in some wee morning hours on the 605 freeway. That car had gotten me to my favorite 80s music stomps, the Lhasa Club small with great punk&otherwise bands, The Roxy, the Atomic Cafe in Little Tokyo where we’d go after the shows (click on this shortie for a great peek inside) but then I broke it. There followed an old station wagon with a cracked engine and another VW, silver, which was also ill-maintained with bad brakes that I failed to mention to my friend who borrowed it to go to the store and came back rightfully angry (sorry again for that, M!). A fleeting moment of driving delight rolling down Pacific Coast Highway, window down, arm crooked on the sill, cigarette dangling, something loud like “Pour Some Sugar on Me” blasting. Probably why I could never hear any of my cars telling me they needed a tune-up. Then I moved to NYC and happily gave up the need for wheels except for the bicycle kind.

I’ve never wrapped myself in car culture. I do enjoy another kind of on-the-highway, wheeled escape: motorcycles. Being a passenger on one. There I can grasp a kind of freedom. Hence Samantha, Dennis and my much-enjoyed Honda Stateline. Her spot out in front of our apartment promises easy jump-on and getaway moments, which California can be good for ten-ish months out of the year once atmospheric rivers roll through. Yesterday morning, as the sun was just coming up, one of our neighbors knocked on our door, pointed to the street, and said, “I think your motorcycle was stolen” and holy shit, where Samantha had been the night before all that was left was her cover bunched-up and discarded on the ground. A gut punch. And so began a day of police reports and insurance claims.

Wheels come, wheels go, I thought numbly as I got into the Rocket to go to my dad’s so we could shop together. Things take a while to sink in with me and while there are far more pressing and tragic things going on in the world, this theft truly stunned. It was painful and deserved some processing, which I was planning on doing once the shopping was done—not that anything ever works the way you plan. My dad wasn’t in the mood to shop, so we hung out for a bit, then I set off to do it solo. In the vegetable aisle of the local Stater’s my phone rang with the news that someone in our apartment complex had found Samantha a few streets over and I became that person who talks loudly into a cell phone while blocking the items you want to grab, in this case I paced in front of the forty varieties of lettuce being misted. Apologies to anyone trying to grab the Romaine. Dennis was eventually able to connect with the guy and found Samantha unhurt one street away. Not a scratch. She’d apparently been rolled away, a job that would take at least two people. Either it was a prank or a theft attempt that was given up on before completion. Crazy.

Now all the wheels are here. The Rocket out front, Samantha tucked in the carport, Trixie, the truck, close behind. I never figured I’d be that person commandeering a fleet and, honestly, Dennis is in charge of the T and the S. But still, a week of motor-centric gains and losses that kicked up emotional dirt. The dust may be clearing even though it’s not lost on me that the view will be different once everything settles. It always is. Am I ever ready?