The first car my father drove as a father was really two cars, warped by time into one blurry memory.  It was Grandma’s old car, the dusty purple Toyota Corolla with crank-down windows, and it was the black Honda Accord with the warm gray interior and fuzzy seats. My family family found its beginnings in the age of the “Corollaccord”. It was a small car, with just enough space for Daddy behind the wheel and two little princesses giggling and talking in the backseat. The front passenger seat was sometimes too full with my father’s frustrations and bouts of anger to make room for my mother. The Corollaccord didn’t need fancy features; it instead carried the crayon stains of my first letters and my stick figure family. Dad’s car was our car; simple and strange, yet harmonious.

When I was nine years old my father bought a used maroon 2001 Acura MDX.  It drove like a truck--clunky, turbulent, unsteady.  It didn’t drive as smooth as the Honda or Toyota or whatever car had let me coast through early childhood without knowing any better or any worse. It climbed over tough terrain, like the unpaved trail to Dad’s favorite hiking spot or the dark back roads to the houses of women only my father knew. Mom never wanted to ride with us. Dad needed the 4-wheel drive to get over the mountains she made out of molehills. The Acura was a strong car, but it could not take us everywhere. I wanted to slam down that damned car’s gas pedal because it would not drive my sister and I away from the storms that brewed in our kitchen when Dad stopped waiting until we were in bed to grab Mom by the wrist and hurl words of rage at her.  The Acura’s tires had sturdy grip, but I should have known that nothing is inseparable.

When I was eleven my parents divorced. There was no traction in our home. The compass on the dash of the MDX did not tell me where our lives were headed as our exhausted hearts were left at the curb.  The Acura was a strong car, but the hardest drive it ever made was the first ride from our house, Mom’s house, to Dad’s house on the other side of town. There were a lot of tough rides to come, as prepubescent girls learning to drive are a dangerous breed. I learned in the Acura that tears can make you skid just as easily as puddles, and that I shouldn’t back out of the driveway, but it’s okay to back up, put everything in park and just breathe. I couldn’t always do that, despite the ample space in the truck. With seven seats, the MDX had plenty of room to pack in insecurities, arguments, friends, and school work. My troubles were nomadic, migrating with me, so I tried to guard myself with warm bodies and thick binders. I wanted them to cushion the blow from the wreck that was my family. The grimy sunroof never let in quite enough light to make me transparent, but the hood was big enough for two to sit and ponder the way the stars never stopped shining.  When I was fifteen years old, Dad’s car became mine to handle, and so did all the scratches, the dents, the chips in the paint. It was rugged and raw, beaten and bent but it ran damn well.

When the Acura was passed down with its dents and its strength, my dad purchased a white 2011 Hyundai Sonata. It was sleek, smoother than anything else we had ever driven. The Sonata was clean, fresh. It occasionally smelled of an unfamiliar perfume, conjuring images of the newest curly red-headed woman who had laughed her way to church dinners and jazz concerts alongside my father. I expected it to be cold, with too much space between the seats for me to be able touch my father or my sister or the redhead named Martha. I wanted it to be lonely and awful sitting parked in Dad’s driveway, so I could run back to Mom’s house and the Acura and the turbulence I knew so well. But the Sonata was cozy, and it was quiet. It was not empty, but full of thought, of questions and stepping stones.  When I was sixteen years old, Dad’s car became our car.  We shared the roadmaps in the backseat and the thoughts in the backs of our minds. The Sonata was new and it was strange, but it was ours.

At seventeen, I still drive the Acura to school, to my friends’ houses, back home. Though Dad helped me fix some of the dents that he made, there are plenty I have made on my own. The Sonata is still smooth and white. It is not perfect, but like the Acura, it keeps moving forward. The Corollaccord is a fond memory, a prelude to the story of this road trip we have yet to finish.  Neither the compass in my truck nor the GPS in Dad’s car can tell us where we’re going, so we’ll keep chasing the next car model, the best one, the perfect one.