Fargo Pickup Truck by John Lloyd

For the past month, The Man and I have been sharing a vehicle.  If you have ever had to do this with a spouse or significant other, you already understand that this is a true test of any relationship.  Luckily, I think we passed the test, but it was definitely not easy.

In our country, our cars are our own private spaces, and because our society is still so vehicle-based, it is hard not to feel isolated when you don’t have a car of your own.  I got a little testy when he changed some of my pre-sets on my radio.  And then his “stuff” was in my storage spaces – his work notebook, and his little flashlight, and his receipt book…  every where I turned it was no longer my car, and it irked.

He had sold his old truck for a great price, thinking he would go out and buy another with no problem.  And then we hit a snag, and had to re-adjust our search parameters, and several weeks had gone by.  He needed a truck for work – there were jobs he couldn’t get to because he couldn’t haul large loads in my little wagon, and the search continued.

In the meantime, we settled into a routine – he would drop me off at work, and come back to pick me up at the end of the day.  We would both then go to my parents’ to pick up The Boy.  It was a nice time to connect with each other, a pleasant way to start and end our work days.  I enjoyed it.  I really did.

But I still missed having my car.

We had to do things like grocery shop together, and I found that I much prefer to do that alone (sometimes it’s better if The Man doesn’t know every ingredient in his meals…).  Finding time to myself seemed even harder now that we were down to one car.  And everything is so much more spread out down here than it was up north, that unless you are a senior citizen, for whom all kinds of mass transit exists, one must have a vehicle.

On Day Three of my Nasty Illness, The Man called to tell me he had bought a truck.  He got a good deal, and a good truck, and I am happy that he did his homework.

I’m also thrilled to have my very own vehicle back.