Maybe it was a sign

I saw a car this morning on my way to work that took me back down memory lane.



The year I turned 15 was the first model year of the Nissan Xterra. I fell in love with the car, and hard. I was still months away from getting my license, but I begged and pleased with my parents to buy it for me. I clipped pictures of it to hang in my room, circled dealership prices and ads from the newspaper every week, and convinced them to take me with them for a test drive.

I didn’t get it.

Instead, I got my dad’s used Volvo sedan. I thought it was so ugly (I am so thankful that it wasn’t as bad as the old Volvo wagons), but it was very safe for a new driver - good thing, because I had my share of fender benders in it. To make matters worse, it was a German car designed to be driven and used in the European environment. That little car just wasn’t meant to handle the Florida heat, and we ended up having to repair/replace the air conditioning two or three times. It was a decent little car…but it wasn’t what I wanted.

Throughout high school I held on to hope that maybe I’d get one for graduation, or for my 18th birthday.

Nope.

My college years passed, and I put the dream on the back burner and slowly forgot about it.

Then I met my husband. & when he picked me up for our first date, he walked around to the passenger side and held the door open for me as I climbed into his beautiful, shiny, perfect Nissan Xterra.

It was love at first sight.