Good as New?

​                           She’s my little deuce coupe.  You don’t know what I’ve got.  – The Beach Boys

My old car shakes and rattles as it rolls.  Despite good maintenance, I cannot undo the damage done by that exhausting passenger Time.  For the many practical and financial reasons we all know, I dread the day a mechanic says, “She’s gone. There was nothing more we could do to save her.”  As my old coupe edges closer to the graveyard, I feel a swell of fondness for her.

This anticipatory grief leads me to wonder:  when do things, people, places, and experiences cease to be new?  What is the turning point at which they lose their sparkle? When we begin to take them for granted and pursue something else? When we lose enthusiasm for their care and curse the burden maintenance has become?  When we buy into all of the advertising that new is always better?

At other moments in my life when faced with loss or change, I have thought that if a genie popped out
of my teapot and granted me one wish, my wish would be to see things again as for the first time and
re-experience the wonder and the delight when those things were new and were mine at last.

Today and during this difficult period in which we are living, I am going to do my best to not wait for the genie.  I am going to challenge myself to try seeing people, places, things, and experiences again for the first time--before they are gone, before I write the eulogy.   If I can’t make them new maybe I can reinvigorate my memories.   Today when I get into my old car I will remember the day I drove it off the new car lot. I will picture all of the adventures in between that day and this: college visits with my children, filling the car with Christmas trees and Christmas presents, a million trips to the grocery store, friends who filled the passenger seats, trips across the country where I made new friends, listening to NPR and singing along to classic Motown CDs.  I will bless the old coupe for the thousands of safe rides here and there and back home again.

At 69, my own weary frame now rattles, weary from the miles I’ve traveled, from the bumps in the road and the shocks absorbed.  To remember and to treat ourselves, our things, our places, our work, our people as though they were new is to experience and to express the deepest form of gratitude and to spare ourselves regret.  I guess the miles and the people and the experiences are woven into the fabric of me.  Maybe I don’t want to untie all of those threads and start over with everything new.

Can we really make things “good as new” when time has already made them better?