Oldsmobile

 Oldsmobile

 

Ridiculous name for a car,

It was always new, not old,

Not old the way my dad drove it,

Not faster than everyone else but quicker,  

Whipping its broad white body through traffic,

With deft, last-minute twists of his wrists on the steering wheel

Darting through gaps too narrow for others to dare,

Brushing his fenders by theirs, just barely,

Chrome trim sliding past without a scratch,

Faces behind windshields popping with surprise,

Anger, reproach, at his brazen theft of space,

His thin face and Vitalis-bright hair

Level in the rear view mirror,

My blond crewcut bobbing up and down behind his shoulder,

Playing peekaboo and laughing

At him laughing at me laughing

Each time I bounced and shouted Surprise,

Because there were no seatbelts for me to wear,

No seatbelts or other restraints back then,

Just miles of room to roam in,

The vast rear interiors of 50s cars

Like playgrounds, like Romper Rooms  

Exploding with games and coloring books,

Space enough for imagination to beget whole childhoods,

Going somewhere, always going somewhere,

My dad forever driving, to grocery stores,  

To movies, amusement parks,

Kiddieland or Riverview or some other invented kingdom,

Or with kites in the trunk,

The blue triangular and the red box kites

That he made himself, from kits, of course,

But with his own hands,

Taking me to fly them not in open country fields

But in narrow strips of windy grass and weeds

Next to highways where the air was faster and colder

From the cars shooting past in rush hour traffic,

Cars of all kinds that I could glance at and name,

Because he’d taught me the names,

The Buicks, the Studebakers, the Chevrolets,

Going fast, going somewhere, always going somewhere,

The kites flying high, the wooden peg wrapped with string,

Common household twine, grasped in his strong thin fingers,

The white string taut as it held the flapping kites from vanishing into the sky,

Though they rose so far,

Became so small,

If the day was cloudy they’d almost disappear from view.

 

I thought they had to disappear

I couldn’t see how they could climb so high and ever come down

But they always did,

Swooping slowly back to earth in gentle waves

As if descending a staircase, one step at a time,

Pausing on each one before dropping to the next,

My dad patiently spooling them down,

A few strands of his hair lifted skyward by the stiff breeze,

Exposing the outlines of a bare spot just beginning to show,

His thin arms trembling with the tension of not letting the kites

Come down too fast,

Hit the ground too hard,

Break apart.

He did as much as he needed to do

To keep them unbroken,

To bring them safely home, each time.

 

Then back to the Oldsmobile,

He behind the wheel

And me in the back seat as wide as the highway,

As tall as the sky in which the kites almost disappeared

But never did,  

Packed away in the trunk now but still riding high

In the Oldsmobile,

Like the Oldsmobile, gliding immaculately through rush hour traffic,

Untouched, never old,

Going home,

Always going home.