How love shows up in ordinary objects
On independence, inheritance, and a love that spans the miles.
The little gold card comes in the mail every Christmas.
My father has gifted me a AAA card every year for more than half my life, ever since I first got my license.
“I renewed your membership again,” my dad says with pride, always reminding me he pays extra for a Plus-level family membership. “100 free miles of towing; you can’t beat that.”
It’s a source of comfort for him as an older driver and as a father who still looks out for me — his 40-year-old daughter who lives 2,000 miles (or 20 free 100-mile tows) away.
I remember my dad and mom requesting free tows from AAA throughout my childhood, especially when we owned a 1980 four-cylinder Mustang that seemed to perpetually break down.
The passenger-side floorboard was covered with brown paper grocery bags to catch the antifreeze that leaked from the heater core, a radiator-like part behind the car’s red dashboard. That dashboard had a big hole in it from the time my mother punched it one summer after the air conditioner stopped working. Frustrated by the mechanical mayhem, she hoped her fist might jar something loose.
We eventually replaced the Mustang with a new 1993 Ford Tempo, which would become my car once I got my license eight years later. Ever the bargainer, my mom had somehow gotten the dealership to lower the asking price from $13,000 to $9,500. She was always proud of that seemingly implausible detail, and I was too.
The same year we bought the Tempo, Mom was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Three years later, after the cancer had metastasized to her bone-marrow, liver, and brain, she passed away. She was 40 and I was 11.
The Bimini Blue Tempo always reminded me of Mom, especially after she died. Inheriting it at 16 felt like a way to hold on to her. I liked knowing that the same car she had driven was still running. It made the years when she was alive feel closer at a time when every passing week felt like a calendrical reminder of death’s permanence.
The car, and all its maternal memories, stayed with me throughout my four years at Providence College. When I got a post-graduate fellowship opportunity in St. Petersburg, Florida, my father, grandmother, and I drove it from Massachusetts to the Sunshine State.
By that point, the car was 14 years old but still running just fine. Still, Dad wanted to be sure I had my AAA card and a GPS. It was 2007 (before smartphones had become popular), and many people at the time relied on these handheld devices for directions.
“I don’t want you to get lost driving around all these new roads,” Dad said, worried I wouldn’t be able to find my way in a new place that was far from home.
Growing up, I had watched him hover over Rand McNally road maps on our kitchen table, tracing his fingers along the roads we would travel on trips through New England. These maps, marked by hundreds of little lines that zigzagged and crisscrossed, easily overwhelmed me. I was in awe of how easily my father followed them and how many different routes he could extract.
It’s a running joke in our family that my father takes a while to get wherever he’s going— not because he’s lost but because he opts for the most scenic routes, preferring back roads to main thoroughfares.
I thought of him whenever I drove during those first few weeks in Florida, and I longed for his guidance. In his absence, the handheld GPS became a cicerone of sorts, channeling me along unfamiliar roads and toward new destinations. I liked the pleasant voice of the digital woman: “Turn right at the top of the hill, drive straight ahead, veer to the left at the next intersection.” When I made a wrong turn, which usually led to multiple wrong turns, the ever-patient voice redirected me every time. “Recalculating. Recalculating. Recalculating.”
The sound came to a jarring halt one January morning, when I totaled the Tempo in a four-car pileup while driving to work. The accident (which I came away from uninjured) happened in front of the Crossroads Community Church. The daughter in me who had just wrecked her late mother’s car couldn’t help but feel like I was at my own crossroads.
I called AAA and got the car towed to a local Ford dealership. Then I phoned my father, who began sharing stories about the Tempo, regaling me with memories I’d long since forgotten.
I would go on to share such memories with Troy, the first real boyfriend I ever had. Once we’d been together for a couple years, I got my first new car (a Toyota RAV4), which was eventually followed by two other new cars: a Chrysler minivan we bought after having kids and moving to Texas, and then a Kia Telluride.
Every year the AAA card would arrive in the mail at Christmastime, and every year I’d tuck it in the back of my wallet behind my Half Price Books teacher discount card. I liked knowing that little gold card was there — and that I was at a point in my life where I no longer seemed to need it.
But one day last week I did end up needing it. While I was starting to make the three-and-a-half-hour drive from a book event in Dallas to our home in the Austin area, my car battery light turned on. Hoping I could make it home, I kept driving. But about two hours later, my dashboard lit up like Times Square. I quickly exited the interstate and managed to pull into a Texas Roadhouse parking lot just as my power steering went out and my engine overheating light turned on.
Three Good Samaritans quickly stepped in and helped me coast the car into an open parking spot. I then got out the little gold card and called the 1-800 number on it.
“Are you in a safe location?” the operator asked.
“Yes,” I said, thinking about my dad, with his maps, GPS devices, and decades-long Plus-level membership.
Troy and the kids drove up to meet me at Texas Roadhouse, and AAA towed the Telluride home. Flustered by all that had transpired, I called my father that evening to hear his voice and to thank him for being there.
He was half a country away in Massachusetts, but in that moment, I could feel his closeness and love. It’s always there, tucked inside my wallet and my heart.
Related exercise for writers: The best personal essays have a tight focus. To find a focus, consider writing about an object that holds meaning in your life. In this case, that object was the AAA card. Notice how I mention it at the beginning, middle, and end of the essay. The piece isn’t so much about the card itself but rather about the love and care it symbolizes. Use the object as “a way in” to the story you want to tell.
Absolutely LOVED this essay! As a mom and grandmom whose loved ones live in 6 different states, I'm always hoping we can still feel connected! I have started sending specially chosen board games to the kids. I try to time them with my visits - the games give us a way to have fun together and also get the kids off their screens. They eagerly look forward to the next new game and I hope I come to mind when they play them later on.
As other readers earlier, I loved this story and how you told it. It’s so heart-warming ! I would like to translate part of it for a small fanzine I edit (distribution 40 people in a printed version, we are currently looking to make also a tiny website of it). Would you allow me to do it ? We have a section called « tell us about the car of your childhood » and our friends contributed very nice stories such as yours. I will cite you and tell where the original can be found.