Civic lessons

Spring 200l. Ben and the Civic
en route to the Senior Prom.

It is said you should never love anything that can’t love you back but I love a 1997 red Honda Civic coupe that isn’t even mine. It belongs to my oldest son, Ben, who will turn – Oh God It Can’t Be – 32 next week.

It was purchased from a used car lot in Danbury, Conn., on a snowy Saturday 15 years ago. For months Ben had been claiming he was the only kid in his junior class who didn’t have his own car. I didn’t buy that story – surely at least one of his 200-plus classmates was equally deprived and had to take the school bus – but I did break down and buy him the car which was three years old and had only 11,000 miles on it. 

Ben immediately accessorized the car with four lighted valve stem covers that made the wheels appear to glow as they turned – perfect for an inner-city pimp but not for a boy in a town like Wilton, Conn. He kept them on the car for, maybe, a week. His second purchase, on which he spent every penny he earned working that summer, was a stereo system so elaborate it took up most of the car’s already limited trunk space.  

One Spring afternoon his senior year he was driving the car home from school. His friend Fred was in the passenger seat and our youngest son, Stuart, was in the back when an enormous buck ran out of the woods and onto the road ten feet in front of them. Realizing he was about to be hit, the buck decided to leap over the car but didn’t make it. He crashed through the windshield, his head landing on the console between Ben and Fred. None of the boys were hurt but the deer, who was still kicking, had to be dragged out of the car and shot by the police. My wife’s knees buckled when we went to see the car that night. The front end was smashed in, the windshield – thank you God for safety glass – had shattered into a million pieces but held, and both the exterior and interior were drenched in deer blood and covered with deer hair. The insurance adjuster said he could either declare the car a total loss and Safeco would write a check for its value, or we could see if the car could be repaired. Ben wanted it repaired. And it was.

Three months later an elderly driver sideswiped the car. Once again, the Civic was nearly totaled. Once again, Ben opted to have it repaired.

Ben started college at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2001. Michigan didn’t allow freshmen to bring cars, so the Civic sat in our driveway for a year until our youngest son got his license. Ben ultimately decided he didn’t need the car at all in Ann Arbor. He said it would be a hassle not to mention expensive to find parking, so Stuart drove it until he went off to a college that also didn’t allow freshmen to bring cars.

In 2005, Ben started law school in Philadelphia. It would have cost a fortune to park the Civic in Philly. He didn’t need it there anyway so it stayed in our driveway.

My wife and I bought a Florida vacation house the same year, so we commandeered the Civic for use as our Florida wheels. The car had lost its hubcaps, so I went to Wal-mart and paid $9.99 for a set of four plastic ones.

One night we met friends for drinks, then followed them to an upscale Naples restaurant that offered valet parking. Attendants rushed to open the doors of our friends’ Jaguar but ignored us. After waiting several minutes for someone to at least acknowledge us, I parked the car myself and saved $5 in tips.

In 2007, we sold our first Florida house and bought a new one in a country club community that required residents and guests to pass through not one but two sets of manned gates. When we showed up behind the moving van, the guards refused to believe that anyone driving a ’97 Civic with Wal-mart hubcaps – two were missing by then – could possibly afford to live there and treated us shabbily. We complained to the management company which instructed the snooty guards to let us in, but for months we were constantly being stopped by the “Privacy Patrol” whose members assumed that anyone driving a car like that didn't belong in the community.

Ben graduated from law school in 2008 and reclaimed the car, taking it with him to Washington, D.C., where he had accepted a job. He got married two years ago and last March, he and his wife, Heidi, became the parents of a baby boy. Ben drove Heidi in the Civic to the hospital, where their son, Teddy, was safely delivered five weeks early.

That night Ben and Stuart, who also lives in D.C., were at Ben’s house smoking celebratory cigars when Ben received a call that Teddy had been rushed cross-town to a children’s hospital with respiratory problems. The doctors weren't sure he was going to make it. Ben jumped in the Civic and headed for the hospital. Not being sure where it was, he got lost along the way – a story that brought a lump to my throat when I thought about my boy driving around a big city at midnight, lost and frantic with worry about his own boy.

Spring 2014: Ben brings
Teddy home from the hospital in the Civic.

Three weeks later Teddy came home from children’s hospital in the Civic.

Today, the Civic spends 99.9999 percent of its time outside Ben and Heidi's Washington townhouse in a parking lot it shares with two Mercedes, a Lexus, three BMWs, two Cadillacs and an Audi.  Only one hubcap remains and it’s pretty much disintegrated.  The “University of Pennsylvania Law School” sticker on the back window has faded. Nobody following the car would believe an Ivy-educated lawyer could possibly be behind the wheel but he or she would be wrong. Ben has always been practical and unconcerned about what anyone thinks. He says says it's perfect for the occasional trip to the supermarket or Home Depot, which is all they need a car for in the city.

Heidi picked my wife and me up at the D.C. airport yesterday in the Civic. Teddy was in his car seat in the back. There’s a “Baby On Board” sticker in the window just like the one we had on our Volvo station wagon when his daddy was a baby.

I drove Ben and Heidi to the airport in the car this morning. They're taking a weekend vacation for the first time since Teddy's arrival. We’re having a wonderful time with our grandson. He especially loves the little red car Santa brought him that lights up and plays songs.

I‘ve told Ben I hope the Civic will someday be Teddy’s and you know what? It just might. At 18, it only has 75,000 miles on the odometer; the body and interior are in decent shape (the upholstery was replaced after the collision with the deer), and the transmission shifts as smoothly as it did the day we drove it home from Danbury.

For 15 years that little red Civic has provided safe passage through the world for the people I love the most and I can't help but love it for that.

If that sounds strange, so be it. 

Teddy behind the wheel of his little red car.