Cherry

This piece is a short memoir of an old car we had when I was growing up. This piece was created during a memoir starter exercise in which my teacher said a word and we had to write about something we associated with that word from our past. I believe that this story was inspired by the word red.


      That car was our friend. It was ours when we lived in Hawaii and it made the move with us to California. Her name was Cherry because she was red- she was some kind of station wagon. I remember sitting in the back seat with Sian. Whenever we went around a sharp bend our car seats would tip over, and we cracked up every single time. We thought it was the most hilarious thing. Mom or Dad would have to wriggle around and try to straighten the two of us back up. Looking back on it, it probably wasn't the safest of situations... but hey, we lived. I also remember not being able to reach the knob that wound down our window and as the windows weren't mechanical, Sian and I had to fend for ourselves. We developed a technique in which we used our stubby little legs to kick that know up and then side ways and then down, until it made a full circle... over and over again until that window was at a satisfactory height.
     One could also tell that Cherry was our car by the stickers that decorated mine and Sian's windows. We saved the most special stickers for those windows, from doctor stickers to the ones we earned in school. We had personalized those windows, and that car. 
    The day Cherry broke down for good was tragic. Hearing the news that Cherry would be towed away was like loosing a beloved pet, a member of the family. I remember Sian sobbing and begging Mom to ask the car guys to take Sian's sticker covered window out for her to save, and although it seemed like a reasonable request at the time, we also knew that it wasn't all that practical. We waved good bye to Cherry that day.. and to this day, we still name and personalize our cars.