What Mom Gave Us

A few days ago, I signed up to donate my mom’s car to Habitat for Humanity.

After I did, I got an email from them asking for stories about the car. They wrote that we spend so much time in our cars that we’re bound to have interesting memories tied to them — first cars, tailgates, carpools, long commutes with the same CD on repeat.

I read it and thought, I don’t really have a car story.

Then I went out to clean the car.

I started emptying everything out — the glove box, the door pockets, the back seat. Old receipts. Random cords. Pens that barely worked. Nothing meaningful. And then I opened the trunk.

The last thing back there was a CD.

New Order — Substance.

A compilation album. “Blue Monday.” “Confusion.” “Shellshock.”

I just stood there for a moment.

Really?

That’s when it hit me. That was the story.

My mom owned this car for a few years before she passed away in 2011, in her mid-80s. She loved her independence, and that car gave it to her. At that age, she felt like people weren’t going to come to her anymore. Most of her friends were already gone. The car was how she stayed connected — church, plays, watching our kids perform or play sports, being with family. It was how she kept showing up.

When she died, my brother and I decided I’d take the car and pay off what was left. We needed it. Our kids were getting close to driving age.

What I didn’t expect was how much I would need it first.

Not long after, I lost the business my wife and I had built for nearly 20 years. When it went into receivership, they took my car. Suddenly, I didn’t have one. And there I was, driving my mom’s car to consulting meetings, feeling a strange mix of gratitude and embarrassment.

I hated that feeling. I hated that I needed help from my mom — even after she was gone. It felt like proof that I had failed. And it didn’t help that the car was just a 2008 Ford Focus. Nothing special. Nothing impressive.

I remember one night my brother asked me to drive a friend of his home from his birthday party. It was freezing. We were walking through Fulton Market, and the guy was buzzing — laughing, talking, clearly expecting something decent to be waiting for us.

As we got closer, he asked, “So what is it — a Mercedes? Lexus?”

I said, “Nope. A Ford Focus.”

That moment stuck with me. Not because of him — but because of me. Because I felt exposed. Like the car somehow explained everything I had lost.

But in hindsight, that car was a gift in the truest sense.

For the next 15 years, it quietly carried our family. It became the reliable one — the carpool car. The one you took because it was easy.

The kids learned to drive in that car because it was forgiving. You could see out of it. You could feel what it was doing. Griffin got his driver’s license in it. Audrey and Grace learned in it too. It was the car you practiced in, stalled in, over-corrected in — and somehow it just kept going.

There were accidents. Small ones. The kind that come with learning.

Like the morning Audrey didn’t fully scrape the ice off the windshield and clipped a rearview mirror. No one was hurt. The car took it. We fixed it. Life moved on.

That car took Griffin to high school, to see friends, to the first taste of independence. Audrey and Grace drove it to rowing practice day after day. The air conditioning somehow always worked when it mattered most.

Later, Griffin drove it to work when he was a chef at Girl & the Goat. The smell of fish oil soaked into that car for years. Late winter nights. Long shifts. Exhausted drives home. That car did it all.

Everyone used it, even as it slowly fell apart. Knobs broke. The A/C eventually quit. Keys were lost. Rust crept in. But it stayed part of the family fleet.

A lot happened in that car. Some things I probably don’t want to know about.

It drove Griffin to Minnesota and back through a blizzard. Griffin, Audrey, and Grace went to countless restaurants in that car — sometimes so full afterward they’d just sit there talking, or fall asleep before heading home.

It was once left parked in front of Girl & the Goat for two months because Griffin assumed it would eventually get towed and dug out of the snow. It never was.

Old reliable.

My mom would love knowing we kept that car for another 15 years. That it mattered. That it kept showing up for her family.

Now it’s time to say goodbye.

What I finally realized is that this car didn’t just give my mom independence — she gave that independence to us. It got her out into the world when she needed it most, and then it carried my kids as they learned how to move through theirs.

That feels like a pretty incredible gift.