Mama's Buick

Mama’s Buick

Mama’s Buick was shiny and pretty and blue. It rolled down the highway long and lean leaving strains of Mozart and Chopin in its wake. Mama’s Buick was clean. It had four cd’s neatly clasped in the armrest between the front seats. It had a package of tissues, a tiny bottle of lotion and a steno pad in case Mama had an idea. And Mama had ideas. Mama thought about Keats and Wordsworth. Mama noted novels mentioned on the AM Radio. Mama thought of gifts and projects and journeys to make.

Mama rode the Buick all over town and sometimes to Nashville to see her brother John. Once she carried a wicker chair strapped to the roof all the way from Memphis to Birmingham. Once she sideswiped a mailbox and thought she might be arrested for destroying federal property – even though it was an accident. She paid for the damage out-of-pocket for the shame of it.

Mama’s Buick was a gift Mama gave herself when Grandmama died and left 20-thousand dollars. Mama said she was gonna get herself a new car with a pretty French name in a glorious, blue color. So she did. She also got a second-hand Yamaha Baby Grand and a trio of Swarovski Crystal Swans which she kept in the breakfront next to her dining table. Mama had some port and Cheese-its every afternoon and admired the light dancing yellow, blue and pink off the backs of her tiny, fragile creatures. Then she’d drink half a cup of coffee, watch Jeopardy and read a mystery from the library.

Some said Mama ought not be riding that Buick back and forth across Alabama and Tennessee. Some said a lady her age should settle near her grown children or let them drive the long hours to her.

76 and getting lost on the back roads to Auburn.

77 and taking an extra day to navigate that Buick home to Mobile.

It wasn’t fitting or safe.

Mama had a gentle ignorance of other’s opinions. She could pretend to miss the point or get distracted by a bluejay in the sweetgum tree. Mama knew a lady didn’t argue. A lady simply ignores.

And so when Mama gassed up the Buick on a Thursday in Birmingham and died the next Wednesday of heart failure in a Nashville Hospital, it didn’t much surprise anybody that Mama took her leave on the road, making one last trip in that fine, singing Buick.

What did leave a few jaws wide was the 60-thousand dollars in credit card debt mostly run up shoveling Mama’s grown girls out of chaos. What did surprise the expectant survivors was the swift foreclosure of her three-bed, two-bath condo with all the equity exhausted keeping Sarah Nell and Katy drunk and out of jail.

And so the Buick came to rest in my driveway and became my chariot to and from work, to and from Kroger, to and from countless pediatrician and vet appointments. As the legal wife of Mama’s only boy, also the executor of her last will and testament, I suppose I am entitled to enjoy the smooth sailing, luxury of Mama’s Buick. Believe me though when I tell you that Mama’s Buick will never be my car. Though it sits in the parking lot outside my office full of the children’s debris, dirty socks, a bucket load of sand and a weeks worth of newspapers, it is still Mama’s Buick. When I get home tonight, my husband will wonder why I haven’t washed the windshield and removed the too-small baby clothes from the trunk. One day, a month or so from now, he will say something quietly, as though he has spotted a bluejay in the sweetgum, that lets me know I may be driving Mama’s Buick but I’m not Mama.