Liberty; or, Don't call him Frank

I hadn’t expected to fall in love. But something about him grabbed my interest and grabbed it quick. Maybe it was the confident way he carried himself, or his smooth moves. Heck, maybe it was his good-lookin’ backside. All I know is, when I glanced back over my shoulder as I was walking away, I heard him as plain as day murmur in sultry tones, “My name is Carlos.”

That was the beginning of our love story. Before long, he moved in with me, and we became inseparable. He was a little rough around the edges, sure. Sometimes he’d embarrass me, the way he growled and complained in public. But, I loved him. He gave me what I craved: Freedom. One-on-one attention. A way to get to the grocery store.

After fiveish years and more than 100,000 miles together, I said goodbye this week to my 2010 Jeep Liberty. It was time. The car no longer had the oomph to carry me safely where I needed to go. But, oh, what heartache it is to say goodbye to a hunk of metal that has been your companion and your friend.

I’ve always named my vehicles ― shoutout to Stanley, Stella, Oscar, and Mary Ann ― so I wasn’t surprised when this one named itself that first day I test-drove it.

The name grew, and so did the Liberty’s back story. The air conditioner knob, labeled in centigrade and not fahrenheit, clued me in to the car’s Canadian origins. Obviously, its real name was not Carlos but the uber-French “Guy,” pronounced the French way, rhyming with “free.”

But Guy, my Liberty decided, was a sissy name. He much preferred Carlos, a name oozing with Latino sensuality. No longer a Canadian citizen ― and, all due respect, buddy, not actually from Latin America ― the Liberty was now an American car, with the American name of Frank, which he hated.

(Those of you who name cars understand all this. Those of you who do not name cars…well, you just don’t get it, and that’s your loss.)

Guy Carlos Don’t Call Me Frank and I were quite the pair. He was loud from the get-go and would occasionally get louder until I fixed whatever was wrong with him, which usually took a while. He had been gently driven before we met, but, boy howdy, did we pack the miles on.

My 50-minute-one-way commute to work was just the start. The new job I’d fallen into was glorious and breathtaking. Despite my utter lack of training or experience, the nice folks at a nice newspaper hired me as a reporter at the ripe old age of upper-40-something. Until then, my life consisted of a string of volunteer and part-time gigs that kept my attention focused on my home, my church, and my kids’ small school. Suddenly, my eyes and my horizons exploded open in this new world of journalism, with Guy Carlos as my partner.

We went everywhere to track down a story. To courthouses and jails and soup kitchens and homeless shelters. To the driveways of brave, kind people willing to tell me their story. We raced to fires and zipped down shortcuts to get to crime scenes. We prowled wooded paths and slunk past drug houses and biker gang hangouts and got stuck on back roads where cell service was nonexistent.

When I wasn’t chasing a story, Guy Carlos and I were on the road to my kids’ colleges many hours away or seeking out forest paths I hadn’t yet wandered. He hauled tons ― possibly literally ― of Lake Huron rocks back to our house and carried my kayak from river to pond to creek. He carried me safely through countless whiteout snowstorms, the kind where you’re sure you’re going to slide into the nothingness and disappear forever.

In 2020, he paraded my robe-clad daughter, clutching her mortarboard and laughing as she sat on his roof with her feet dangling through the sunroof, in our small town’s best effort to give its high school graduates some form of normalcy. When my work life got too intense and I couldn’t take another day of the worry and fear and sadness that came with it, my car carried me away, flying down country roads where placid cows and sandhill cranes and sunlight could make me whole again.

Cleaning him out for sale was bittersweet. Through sniffles and muttered chants of, “It’s OK, it’s OK,” I rounded up the detritus of the past years: pocket rocks and smooth driftwood, shells from the peanuts that kept me awake on late drives home in the dark, dozens of pens I was forever dropping as I scribbled notes on the fly. Bits and pieces of the life I lived with this car by my side.

I saved removing his stickers for last. His back window ― held on by duct tape and Gorilla Glue ― had gradually filled with reminders of moments and ideas that had come to matter to me in this, my new life. A coffee shop sticker and one of Michigan, connecting me to places I love. An “I carry naloxone and I’ll help if I can” sticker to remind me that helping others does not start with judgement. A sticker reading, simply, “Adventure,” reminding me who I am and who I want to be.

The husband’s car was quiet as we pulled away from the Liberty. I took one last look over my shoulder and said one last mental goodbye.

The thing is, I wasn’t saying goodbye to Guy Carlos.

To the car I loved, yes. But my buddy Guy Carlos, the one who heard my tears and my prayers and my shouts of jubilation and my occasional expletives, the one who earned a pat on his dashboard when he overtook a slowpoke on U.S. 23 North and a last kiss on his steering wheel before I walked away for the last time, wasn’t metal.

Guy Carlos was an idea. He was everything that vehicle gave to me while it was part of my life. I lost the car. But I get to keep what it meant to me.

I started this blog post intending to expand it into a nice essay about some bigger concept with universal application. But I think I’ll stop here. Partly because I really, really need to blow my nose and the people in the coffee shop where I’m working are unnerved by the lady crying in the corner. But also, I think it’s OK to talk about letting go of something you love and let that be enough.

Bye, buddy.

Thanks for the ride.

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I have a new set of wheels now. It’s a spiffy 2017 RAV4 with insanely low mileage. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it will. Interested in a visitor? Shoot me an invite, because the Rav and I are anxious to hit the road.