Searching for Home in my '93 Toyota Tercel

My home for years was a 1993 Toyota Tercel named Ella Fitzgerald. I had a place to live, but that two-door with its aqua exterior and black pleather interior took me everywhere I wanted to go from 1998 until 2004. My dad helped me buy it before I went off to college; it was a loss-leader that the dealership put in the paper to get customers in the door. It cost $2,500 and did not have air conditioning, which my dad somehow convinced me wasn’t a problem, despite D.C. summers—hazy, hot, and humid. I remember driving up to Philadelphia one bright summer afternoon to visit my best friend Suzanne, and when I got out to fill up with gas, my silky thin capris were translucent from sweat after sitting in the inferno for several hours.

With the lack of power steering, driving it was like wrestling an alligator and sitting in it was like baking in an oven. Everything about that car was manual—the stick shift, windows, locks, and I had to plug in a tape adaptor to use my Discman. But after driving it on many road trips with friends, and carting myself back and forth from college, it felt like a hard, protective outer shell. It became an extension of myself.

I read an article today that warned against capturing box turtles and taking them home as pets, only to release them back into the wild. Box turtles only travel within a one-mile radius of their homes throughout their lifetimes, and if moved to another location, will spend the rest of their lives trying to find their way back home. I no longer have my Tercel, but I still find myself on a quest to make my way back to where I started—young and free.