New Year’s Day, and as usual I am arriving late to mass. It is a terrible habit, not made any easier by having children who fight getting dressed for mass, and in particular a daughter who waits until the last possible second to start getting ready… Procrastination City, folks! Still, I figured that I’d find a good parking spot because after all mass was at 12:30pm, and the Dolphins were playing at home against the hated Jets at 1pm for the season ending game, and the retirement game for Jason Taylor. Everybody would somehow or another be tuning into this game, right? (Insert Family Feud Buzzer sound here with a giant X in a rectangle) The mass was packed, which meant that I had to park on the street on 102 Avenue, by the school. It was in doing so that I encountered something I would have otherwise missed… a mint condition 1970′s Dodge.
Now, don’t ask me what kind of Dodge it was… it didn’t say. It only said Dodge in back and on the hood. But it was totally classic… and original. No updates visible anywhere on the car. Trust me I looked. And I made my children look. There was no side view mirror on the passenger side. There were no bucket seats… just a single seat that went ALL the way across the front. No seatbelts in back, nor in the middle in front. The radio was strictly AM. And it had those push buttons that would move a little red vertical bar from one location to another to find the preset stations… no scan button, just a tuner that would leave you very close to the frequency you were looking for. It had no power locks or power windows. You had to physically reach over if you were driving alone to open the passenger window with those rolly things. And unlocking the door meant you had to pull up on that push pin thingy. And the material of the seats? It was that vinyl synthetic material… you know the one. The one that on hot days when you were wearing shorts would leave blistering red marks on the back of your legs if you didn’t sit carefully. Remember that? The car was AWESOME – if for no other reason than the fact that it brought back memories of my childhood. I had a car very similar in many ways to this one for the first 10 years of my like (except mine was a Buick Skylark).
After admiring it for a while, I pried myself away from it because after all I was going to mass. When I was about to enter the church I thought to myself, “Man, I should have taken a picture of that beaut!” I figured I could hurry out afterwards though and take a picture of it with my phone. It was during the mass, that shortly after I entered the priest started his homily (yes, I was THAT late). And within the homily he talked about starting fresh and starting anew in the New Year. We had to look forward. We had to find the promise and all that is good coming ahead of us. It was time to stop dwelling in the past and make a move into the New Year, full of hope. It was a very nice homily. It didn’t fully kick in though until I got back to my car only to see it sitting alone. The Dodge was gone. Much as last year was gone. I got a glimpse of something wonderful, something old. I relived some old memories with something from my past. But now the past was gone, and though I had nothing at the moment to enjoy the way I did that car for all of 5 minutes, there was now a promise of many more intriguing things to find, if only I stopped and started looking for them.
I am still hoping to run into the car again sometime soon. Next time the camera will be ready. But I am not going to dwell on searching for it. I enjoyed the moment. Now I have to look ahead and find many more little moments that will bring smiles to my face as well as big moments that will help define 2012 for me and for my family. This year is definitely full of promise. Many great things happened last year (along with some not so great things). It’s time to grow with the good and let go the bad, and make 2012 another memorable year, so that when I look back on it for however brief a moment I can thoroughly enjoy the year much the same way I enjoyed encountering that Dodge.