At a quarter to 7 this morning I bid fond farewell to my little car.

At nearly 15 years old it had long been worth less than the cost of even basic repairs (and repairs in recent years haven’t all been basic), but I had hung on to it for it’s 14-foot turn radius — which, I can tell you after extensive research, is tighter than anything currently on the market  other than the super-tiny subcompact cars.

But I won’t need the car in London, so I donated it to the local NPR station (all those years of fundraising drives had conditioned me well!).

The process was quite easy (the most painful part was the 5:45am phone call from the driver who wanted to know if he could come earlier than the 8am appointment) and I was a little surprised, as the truck left, to feel a twinge of loss — and not only for the turning radius.  Except for my three carless years in New York, I’ve driven that car since I was 23 years old.  That’s a lot of life and a lot of memories.

As I walked back into the house, I found myself humming Jack’s farewell song from Into the Woods . . .

. . . only without the “someday I’ll buy you back” part.  🙂