Yes!!!! My sister finally has a social engagement that will remove her from the house until Saturday morning! Thank the Lord above. Jen's awfully lucky that I make a point to be at home as little as is humanly possible. I guess I have to trade really terrible summers for the bliss of being alone during the school year. It's so beautiful to have a house entirely to yourself all week. Of course my mom is physically present at certain hours, but we don't see each other much and we get along fabulously. That was my reward for fourteen years of living with my dad's continual presence: solitude. This year will be even better because now I have a car! My dad's car, ironically. It might be said that I profited in certain ways from his death, but I didn't really. As much as I appreciate being alone and having the truck, it's nowhere near a fair trade for a parent.
That's the reason that truck has always meant so much to me. My dad loved it so much that in my mind it's inextricably linked to him. Every morning I'd be getting up as he was leaving the house. I'd look out my window as he'd back the car out of the driveway, hop out, run around the other side of the car, flip open the mirror which is too wide to fit into the garage, hop back in, and drive away. It was funny to watch in the wintertime.
For a long time after he died, I'd be walking up the street coming home from school, and I'd come around the bend and see the Tahoe sitting there in the driveway and I'd let myself pretend that it had never happened. I'd pretend that he'd come home early from work, that he was down in the den doing paperwork and that when I stood in the doorway he'd look up and say "Hi honey, how was your day" with that sort of tired smile. I really almost believed it sometimes, when I could see the light was on downstairs, that maybe it really was some stupid dream and he hadn't died. But I could only pretend until I opened the front door and there was no one there. Those weren't the only times I pretended, of course. There were other times when I'd be in the car with my mom and I'd see a bright red Tahoe and I'd immediately check the driver to see if it was him. Those times I wished so hard that I'd see a big guywith glasses and thinning salt and pepper hair. Like maybe he'd just go cruising past us as though he had never been gone at all. Those were the kind of tricks I used to play on myself.
It's only been two years, and look how things have changed. I drive his truck now; he always said I was the only one tall enough to drive it anyway. He also said he'd never ever let me have it, but as it turned out he didn't get much of a say. Now when I come into the den, it's really my space, not his. I took over his desk, put away all his books and his stuff and put my decorations everywhere. The drawers are a disaster. A lot of the stuff is still around; this big paperweight that says "DAD", this rock that I cleverly painted to resemble a penguin, his weird lamp--the base of which is made of part of a pipe or something from a decommissioned reactor. And of course his books, from the Valve Designer's Handbook to the Handbook of Thermodynamics--none of which books actually come close to fitting in your hand. But it's like his presence is fading, and it's faded in the truck too since I stuffed my CDs in there, I've probably got makeup rolling around where he kept his car phone, and I have a hula hoop in my trunk for some ungodly reason. He's still there, though. That truck was more his than anything else he owned. Of course I love that it's big and powerful, and I love the feeling of being so far above the other puny little cars on the road. Most people assume that's the real reason it means so much to me, but that has nothing to do with it. My dad has everything to do with it. If something happened to it, nothing my mom could do to me would be worse than destroying a link to my dad, one of the few that I have left that I can really feel.