Christmas morning, 2004. The family room floor was a dizzying display of torn wrapping paper, toys, clothes, and the dumped contents from our stockings. My mom, on the couch, sat back while my dad produced a set of keys. Car keys. “Where is it?” she asked, eyes wide. “In the front,” he said.
There in the driveway it stood with a big red bow adorning the hood. A new, shiny, silver Honda Pilot. The flush red of the bow popped against the backdrop of snowy neighborhood lawns. The silver doors glinted in the morning light. It was beautiful. My mom’s shiny, silver Pilot was just beginning its journey as a Piazza family staple.
It took us to visit family in Pennsylvania on dozens of trips. For my sister’s and my many soccer and lacrosse games, it sat in the parking lot amongst the many mommy mobiles. Its primary quarters were on the left side of the garage, where it slept peacefully in front of the lawnmower, shovels, and other outside equipment. While it remained mostly safe from harm, time did wear on, and its seats and brake pads bored signs of love, much like the Velveteen Rabbit. In 2020, my dad replaced my mom’s beloved vehicle with the latest model, and I took the shiny, silver Pilot to graduate school. It carried me home for breaks on long car rides in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Broken keys, flat tires, dead batteries, tight parking spots, tighter carpools, ditches, hail, squeaky windshield wipers, muddy floormats, fur-so much fur, the shiny, silver Pilot weathered many storms. And it met every challenge head on with the same tough spirit my mom has.
Yesterday, the shiny, silver Pilot was sold to a new driver. It backed out of our driveway and drove down Saddleback Way one last time. As anticlimactic as our goodbye was, I can’t think of a more poetic sendoff. My mom’s Honda Pilot came into the Piazza family with joyous celebration on a cherished Christmas morning. It left on an overcast, July afternoon. I checked the odometer before it left. The shiny, silver Pilot had driven over 209,000 miles. And it’s memories live in every one of them.