Cars

Cars are a part of our everyday lives, necessary to get us from point A to point B. We often don't think too much about them unless they breakdown, or at least I don't think too much about them, ordinarily. This past couple of weeks has been different. A car can be a part of a person. The type of car that you drive does say a little bit about you, even if you deny it. Uncle Walter was like that. He always said he didn't care much about cars and never did. He even said that he never was a very good driver. He said when he was young, his family didn't have but one car and my dad wanted to drive all the time, so he did and Walter didn't. He said when he graduated from Westpoint, he had people drive him around. The army didn't want officers to drive themselves. While the driving part might have been true, I don't believe the part about him not caring about cars. He always had the "cool" car. We didn't get to see him often, but when he came home in a car, not flying home in a rented private aircraft, he always had a cool car. He had an Austin Healy convertible. In the early 60's he had a long car with big fins. And then in the 70's he had a Corvette.

The "Colonel's Corvette" is what the 1970 Corvette Stingray that Walter owned was known by at the Cars by the Creek car show; Impatient Creations, where it was restored; and, now, Eric Joiner Classics; the broker who sold it. It is a beautiful car. My son David LOVED that car. I thought of it more of a rocket on wheels. A dangerous, expensive, money pit, rocket on wheels. When you have to take the t-tops out of the car so that you can sit up straight behind the wheel and two inches of your head is above the windshield, I don't think it is safe for you to drive; not to mention the huge engine that just begs you to, "See what she will do."

Even though I didn't have the same type of affinity for the car that David did, I still feel sad that it is gone. My sadness is a sense of loss of another part of Walter. He bought the car when he was in Vietnam from the PX in Saigon. He picked it up when he got stateside in St. Louis and drove it to Leavenworth, KS, where he was stationed through the end of his career. He drove the car for several years until he parked it in the barn on the farm because it needed some work done and it was no longer practical to drive everyday. Jackie talked him into getting the car restored in 2007 so she could drive it around town sometimes. She said it was a shame to have a car like that just deteriorating in the barn, and she was right. He had it towed to Impatient Creations for them to restore the car and spent much more than the car is worth to have the work done. Sadly, Jackie became ill and passed away in early 2008, many months before the car was finished. Walter could not drive the car and he could not bear to get rid of it. He said, "You will have to figure out what to do with it after I am gone." At least we took it to Cars by the Creek once before he passed away last year. I think it made him happy. We took it back this year and it won first place in its muscle car division. I think it made him happy again.

Even after restoration you have to drive a car to keep it running properly. That was not done enough over the past four years. We had to invest more money into the car to get it ready to sell. We took it to a broker and within three days, it was sold. I don't have to worry about my son's brains being above the windshield, which is a good thing. I don't have to worry about what will have to be fixed next (nothing's cheap, even headlights.) But, one more part of Walter is no longer with us. I miss him.

Dangerous Territory

I have had an epiphany this week regarding the pitfalls of staying connected to my children through electronic media. I like to keep up with what is going on in my children's lives.I am a friend to two of them on Facebook. I follow them all on Twitter. When they join the professional world, I suppose I will be LinkedIn to them. I want to be connected to them in this way because I get to hear snippets of conversation between them and their friends that gives me some insight into their world. The problem is that sometimes there are things you don't want to know.

When I joined Facebook a few years ago, I sent a friend request to David, middle son, who was in college at the time. He has yet to respond to my request. I was insulted at first. I get it now.

I should have understood David's reluctance to accept my friendship request. He does post some quirky things on there. That is just his personality. His profile pic was of a random black man and a dog. I know this because he would comment on posts made by mutual Fb friends. I guess when you do rather bazaar things you don't want your mother questioning them. He is a grown man now and if he wants to post bazaar things on Fb, that is his own business.

While an undergrad, my oldest son also had some less-than-flattering pictures of himself (really was him) on Facebook. But college is college. I didn't expect pictures of him studying for exams. Those are no fun. At least he was smart enough to take those pics down before applying for jobs and law school. Sort of like the Dutchess's topless photos, pull them all back in and pretend it never happened. He too is a grown man and has matured past the "firefly" stage. (You think you are lighting the world, but you are really just showing your ass.)

This brings me to my youngest son and the reason why I say staying electronically connected to your children is dangerous territory. Steven, my youngest, has been in college for exactly one month. He came home last Sunday to celebrate my birthday with the family. He arrived about 3:00 p.m. I was outside washing my car and was unaware that he had come in. He was unaware that I was outside washing my car. When I came in he was watching football on TV, playing a video game on his laptop, and tweeting/texting on his phone. He is quite the multitasker. We talked for a while, and by "talked" I really mean I asked him questions and he gave monosyllabic answers. I suppose his multitasking does not extend far enough to having a conversation while watching TV, playing a video game, and tweeting/texting. Anyway, I was use to this type of conversation, after all, I am the mother of three sons. The real blow came when I read his tweets a couple of days later. He tweeted at 3:30 p.m., the approximate time I came in from washing my car, "I wish I could go home." BAM! What a blow. First "home" is now a dorm room. Second, he prefers it to real home. Third, he had already told me that he was alone most of the weekend because most of his friends had left to come home (real homes) on Friday or Saturday because there was no football game in Tuscaloosa, so he would prefer an EMPTY dorm room to being at home.

I would have preferred to be blissfully unaware of all of this. I immediately "unfollowed" him. There are some things a mother just does not want to know. I try to think back to the dark ages when I went away to college at 18. There was no Fb, cell phones, tweets, or blogs. If there were, I would not have wanted my mom cyberstalking me (which I was NOT doing.) She would have wanted to remain blissfully unaware of some of the things I did back then too. I do know that I wanted to be on my own. My first taste of real freedom was without her being able to call me 24/7, or watch what parties I went to, or even if I would prefer to not come home to celebrate her birthday.

I guess some of my insecurities as a mother stem from the fact that I never got to know my mother as an adult. She died before I was able to do that. I don't want to miss out on that with my children. Perhaps after college and Steven is a grown man (not a teenager in a 6' 3" body) I will follow him again. Until then, I am going to close my eyes and pretend this is still "home" and he prefers my company to no company.