God bless you Honda.
I’ve driven a brown, 1999 Honda Accord LX since I was eighteen years old. I got her for $500 from an angelic family friend who took great care of her since she drove it off the lot. Since then, I’ve probably put $10,000 of major and routine work into her and haven’t regretted a cent. Hondas are exceptionally resilient cars and my little Accord has proven that.
She’s been chugging along for twenty-two years, with 300,000 miles on her odometer, National and State Park maps filling her side pockets, and a center console full of a decade of my ridiculous odds and ends.
My Honda is sturdy, reliable, and has taken me and my little butt to more major life moments and adventures than I can count.
Excuse me while I write these and cry:
1. We’ve driven up the winding beauty of California Highway 1 over a dozen times, both with friends and solo—one of my favorite drives of all time. Surging ocean outside one window and chiseled coastal landscape outside the other always remind me how much I adore California and how lucky I am that it calls me its own. My mom’s tradition on this highway is to play Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” loud enough for the crashing waves to hear. The bagpipes will prompt tears and make you feel like you’re starring in the credit sequence of a critically acclaimed drama.
2. The steering wheel has gotten a much too close show of a decent handful of my ugliest cries. This Accord has been a safe haven of solitude where I knew that once I made it to the driver’s seat and shut the door, I could release and royally melt down. It’s stunning to think of how life has aged me in the decade of owning this car. From graduating high school to travel to jobs to all the changes in between, this steering wheel could probably clock the developing wrinkles on my face and the gradual change in my demeanor from naïveté to greater maturity day by day.
3. My Honda and I have glided beneath the towering godliness of the Redwood National Park multiple times—the shadows of the giant branches stronger than the sunlight trying to peek through, casting near-complete darkness across my windshield. Breezing past flourishing ferns of the forest floor, I would roll her windows down so both she and I could fill up with the saturated oxygen of the dark green world that swallowed us up.
4. We’ve been pulled over three times. I’ve stood beside the road at midnight while every nook and cranny of my Accord was searched for illegal substances and I contemplated what a night in jail might feel like.
5. We’ve almost died trying to scale up the mountainous, wintery highways of Colorado at 1AM beside big rigs and angry locals and I’ve never sat so far forward in my seat and gone that long without blinking.
6. She’s driven me to nearly every first date I’ve ever had.
7. My Honda has seen both oceans in her lifespan, her tires have tread half of the fifty states in the process, taking me and friends to countless golden moments we will reminisce about forever.
8. She has seen me dance in the driver’s seat, try desperately to hit all the notes alongside Adele, indulge in the guilty pleasures of my concealed playlists, and transported me and my friends to different worlds as we swapped music and queued our favorite songs.
9. My sweet friend and I have laid on her hood, drank cold Guinness beers, snacked on Snyder’s Honey Mustard Pretzel Pieces and awed at meteor showers, sharing secrets and deep beliefs.
10. My Honda’s heard me debrief my days, my worries, my options, and my next moves on the backroads leading home. She’s been witness to angry prayers, pleading prayers, thankful prayers, faith-filled prayers, and laughing, joyful praises.
11. Important people have sat in her passenger seat and I’ve opened up my heart to them. Some of the conversations that stick with me the most have happened in a dimly lit parking space with the radio on and the engine off.
Her slow demise was as beautifully orchestrated as the life she lived. I felt the pull to get out of town this past week on one of my days off from work for a day trip—nothing unusual for me and while I mysteriously slipped out the door that morning, my roommate, without knowing where I was heading, farewelled with: “Have fun going west!”
She knows me too well.
I enjoyed every moment of my drive. The sounds of Alexi Murdoch filled the car most of the way. We went through Sonoma, Napa, and to Dillon’s Beach, up Highway 1, made my usual stop for gas in Jenner, enjoyed a little more of the highway we’d come to know well, and then popped a squat on the sands of Schoolhouse Beach.
I pulled my light blue, foldable beach chair out of my trunk and sat beside the ocean for hours drinking up the delight of the day, bundled up with my beanie and warmest coat. The tide was violently beautiful this January afternoon sending mist into my view as beams of light made me squint happily.
It was picturesque and perfect and as all the years up until this moment, my Accord faithfully brought me it.
Later that evening, I pulled off my exit to get home and she started to gargle. A stoplight more and she went kaput. In previous breakdowns my first reaction would be dread and calculating of costs for repairs, but this time, it was acceptance. I knew the time was coming and I felt as ready as she did.
I’m beyond moved that we got to go on one last glorious hoorah together and it couldn’t have been more sweetly coordinated—a joy-filled finale to a decade of incredible, lifelong memories in this vehicle.
I will treasure the memory of this 1999 Honda Accord as she was a gift that brought me value beyond measure in the form of day trips, road trips, everyday commutes, reliability, and decent gas mileage.