Home Again, Home Again

By TAD BARTIMUS

The little red pickup was once a constant in our lives, always ahead or behind us on the road, making us smile as a pack of teenagers stuffed into the cab and lounging in the truck bed waved gaily as they commuted to school.

The truck once belonged to a little old lady from – I'm not making this up – near Pasadena. Now it was always driven by either the son or daughter of friends who lived far from town. It was a symbol of their independence, a privilege bestowed by brave parents who gave it to their children to drive safely and responsibly. Sixteen miles of narrow, cliff-hanging road separated the family's farm from school and a dozen extra curricular activities. Having the truck not only gave the kids freedom to participate, it made them popular chauffeurs.

Always full of sleepy students headed for class on weekday mornings, overflowing with laughing kids looking for fun in the afternoons, the pickup's routine was so predictable we could set our clocks by it. But all adults were once teenagers and know from experience that adolescents test their independence with an accelerator. I wasn't the only worry wart cornering the young drivers in the grocery store and sternly warning: "Slow down or I'll tell your parents."

Thank God it was only the little red pickup and not its occupants who wound up wearing permanent scars. Too-close encounters wrecked the bumper, bashed the fender, took out a side mirror. The truck was pocked with so many dents its owners stopped worrying about new ones.

It seemed that the little red pickup was always around; then one day it wasn't. Its drivers had gone off to college and waving to the first-day-of-high-school commuters was not the same. We missed the little red pickup's precious cargo – their energy, their optimism, even their god-awful loud music. We felt a little older. No. We felt a lot older.

The other day I pulled out of my driveway and slid in behind a pickup. A little red pickup. THE little red pickup! Same droopy bumper, same smashed fender, same tail light held together with duct tape. I felt a rush. Yes! It was indeed summer. They were back!

In the grocery store parking lot we hugged and I took a good look at them. Taller, straighter, a little more reserved. Her hair was more fashionable, her sunglasses more expensive. There was a newly-pierced navel with a tiny jewel in it. She caught me staring and returned my gaze, daring me to criticize. I didn't. All year she'd been away, making her own choices, wrestling with her own conscience, taxing her own fine mind on psychology, French, the origins of the novel. Novel, navel, what the hell -- it was her life now.

He was bigger. A LOT bigger. He'd gone away a boy and come back a man. I didn't know whether to hug him or shake his hand; he solved the problem with a peck on my cheek. They were still the leaders of the pack, but no longer quite a part of it. They had seen places and done things and even though they'd been homesick they'd stuck it out and proved something new to themselves and those of us back home who'd had to let them go.

Yes, they were back behind the wheel of the little red pickup, but just for a few weeks. "I want to travel," he said. "I want to have some adventures," she said. Next summer would be Europe. Or maybe India. Or perhaps the South Pacific. "Somewhere new." "Something to further my career."

They would say hello, go to the beach, hang out with their friends, or at least the ones still around. But there wouldn't be any predictable routine, no setting of clocks by the passing of a little red pickup. 

Now I know that the life expectancy of a used truck is the time it takes for a child to grow up and go away. 

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