This is not my little blue car. This is a little blue car I saw watching “A Place to Call Home” tonight on Acorn TV. My little blue car is a 2006 Honda Civic with a broken sunroof and mouse shit in the back seat. Still, I’m grateful for my little blue car. It’s been one hundred percent reliable for almost 15 years: a few flats (not the car’s fault), an unfortunate encounter between its undercarriage and a large rock (not the car’s fault), and ok, one radiator leak early on. Aside from those quotidian misfortunes, the car has been remarkable. I’m grateful for a machine that works as intended for so long, and maybe this year I’ll get the sunroof fixed. For sure, soon, I’ll clear out the recycle mail and the mouse shit, wipe down the vinyl inside. I’ll keep my little blue car as long as it runs, even as the paint on the hood crackles and the gaskets peel, because it still gets me where I need to go (which isn’t much of anywhere these days), and it’s pretty fuel efficient.

The saucy little blue car on TV tonight triggered a sudden perspective. How beautiful it was! In a different time and place, had I made different choices throughout my life, that little blue car could well have been my little blue car. Instead of living in a mud hut in the boonies of western Colorado, I might have made decisions in my earlier life that landed me in a location and income bracket conducive to owning a vintage powder-blue convertible. Just imagine that cute little car on the three-inch roadbase that’s all that remains of the driveway gravel! Nope. I’m grateful for the choices I made that led me here, to the place that I call home, grateful for this life and for the little blue car that suits it so well.