i got no car and it's breaking my heart

You might remember in May we bid farewell to the Little Tikes turtle sandbox that had been in our backyard about a year longer than my boys cared for it to be. The day after dragging it to the curb for a citywide clean sweep, my Tool Man purchased a bag of grass seed, intent on offering the 43" x 47" circle of barren land back to Mother Earth. I watched him that weekend, sprinkling the ground, imagining the moment was like New Year's Eve on Time Square for the ants and other insects dwelling in the dirt, the seed falling like ticker tape from the sky.

I'd hoped having grass growing there, emerald green blades bursting upward, would help me forget the fact that we'd tossed out a link to my childrens' not so very distant pasts, but over the summer, real rabbits replaced the plastic turtle in our yard, and those rabbits circled the area like pygmies around a boiling cauldron, the seeds serving as their version of the hapless jungle explorer tied and trussed and prepared to meet his doom. Four months later, the grassless circle where memories and sand castles were made is still the first sight my eyes land upon when I look out my bedroom window each morning. Quite honestly, it still makes me sad.

"The rabbits are a sign," I told Tool Man one evening after I'd counted eight of them sunning themselves in the yard, perhaps smoking fat cigars and downing shots of aged scotch after another seed feast. "You know what they say about rabbits. I think the rabbits want us to have another baby."

Tool Man rolled his eyes because he thinks that I think everything wants us to have another baby. He made me stop finding reasons to go to Target last week during their baby sale because I'd return home and sigh about how I must have just missed that day's shipment of adorable infants. "I think if you buy five, you get a free $5 Target gift card," I'd wistfully remark. "Perhaps I should see if they're issuing rain checks!" Needless to say, no baby.

And now no Wiggles Big Red Car taking up a corner of my family room. When I returned from one of those many Target trips last week, I walked into the house and was immediately taken aback by the wide open floor plan. "There's something different going on here," I deduced while Tool Man remained calm and quiet. "Did you vacuum while I was away?"

"I sold the Wiggles car," he said. Then there was silence. Then some more silence. Tumbleweeds released from the expanse of open land where once the Wiggles parked their Big Red Car next to the couch may have actually rolled between us. I was physically crestfallen. In the hour and a half I was gone, this man who never gets rid of anything up and sold the Wiggles car. "I wish you would have just vacuumed," I cried, and not just because there were apparently tumbleweeds in our house.

Granted, my youngest son, for whom we delightfully purchased the Wiggles car as a Christmas present years ago during the height of his Wiggles love, is advancing toward the age when he can drive a real vehicle and not some plastic car one navigates with Fred Flintstone-like precision, tooting his horn at me when I jaywalked through the kitchen or watching for stuffed animal crossings. So many days my boy and his four Australian lads would cruise through the house, occasionally stopping to pick up that minx, Dorothy the Dinosaur, and sing ditties about fruit salads. For the last couple of years, the car's roomy front seat was the table where I rested my cup. It's trunk, with the gas tank lid that was typically flipped up because I'd reach down and flick it up and down with my index finger while we watched television, balanced my laptop each night when I logged off. Tool Man might say I kept the large toy car around these last few years because of my residual crush on Anthony Wiggle, and to that I would say...maybe.

Mostly, however, it was there for the memories. The memories and the lingering hope that maybe I'd come home one day, from Target or elsewhere, with another child who would cruise the house in it.

Toot, toot, chugga chugga, weep, weep, weep. The Big Red Car is gone.

"I got 20 bucks for it!" Tool Man said. Considering the car is practically an antique and formerly retailed for $39.99, I'll confess I was momentarily impressed with the man's salesmanship. But still...

Later that afternoon, my youngest son returned from school and plopped down on the couch next to me. "So, Dad sold your Wiggles car," I told him. I may have been pouting a little. "Yep," he nonchalantly replied. "That kind of makes me sad," I said. "How about you? Does that make you sad?" With a look on his face that stopped just short of including an eye roll, my sweet 7 year old responded, "Mother, honestly, I can't even remember the last time I used that car."

Honestly. So...so much for memories, eh?

(at least the ones I'm going to keep tucked away now that some other child is cruising around in the Big Red Car!)

With that, he asked for a snack (and in the spirit of all things Wiggles, I - albeit unsuccessfully - suggested fruit salad)(why? because it's yummy, yummy) and then was on his way, and Tool Man and I are 20 bucks richer. You know what you can buy with 20 bucks? A few memories, perhaps, and a hell of a lot of grass seed.