Only Blue Cars

only ever blue cars.

When I was smaller

my mother and I only

ever traveled in blue cars

from before we left Austin,

when everyone still lived in Texas and nobody

lived anywhere else

it was always blue

no matter what

make, year, or model,

always blue cars

from the Volkswagen beetle that

(somehow) lost

an entire wheel, bouncing and spinning

before being swallowed up by the wildflowers

alongside the highway one spring afternoon in 1979

to the Honda Accord that smelled of menthol cigarettes

and that one rainy day

on the way to school when

it permanently took hold of a cassette of the Beatles' Revolver,

forever limiting listening to that or the radio, the empty case for it

still in the glove box next to Judy Collins' In My Life 

plus a well-worn copy of The House of Mirth,

when the car was towed off cracked engine block deemed irreparable.

Always blue cars.

For a while it seemed

there was perhaps

an underlying schema to it

no brand affinity

or anything that obvious

but the pattern remained,

blue, and except for that one Cadillac

which are never small

compact with a preference for cargo space

as though shouting to the world in acknowledgment of

both suitable utility and painful awareness of diminutive status.

I am small but I am useful, they said.

Look at me

but also

don't look at me.

Because children rarely ask the right questions I never thought to ask her

why always blue cars until much much later,

and by then, I'd long since moved out

having sufficiently lengthened both bones and thoughts

enough to leave the logical mystery

behind her car buying or rather car acquisition as just that

a thing that no longer held

any discernible shape, pattern, rhythm or sense

just blue cars.

It was late one summer afternoon

somewhere after

I'd gotten old enough to move out

but not quite so old that I found more excuses

than reasons to visit her

and sit on the porch

We sat and talked,

stories about technology and politics

this being when I thought I knew things about that

both of us aware that the real conversation here

like all between parent and child

happens in spaces between the words of any story

until during a lull when

you could almost hear both minds

working overtime as they reloaded

I said there’s something I always wanted to know

but never thought to ask until now:

why only blue cars?

I could see the confusion

that not even another cigarette could mask

so I hurried on to explain

that Beetle, the Honda named Amelia

which is what you would have called me

had I been someone else

the Toyota we shared when I was in high school

that K car you gave me;

even that silly Cadillac

(remember?) – they were all blue

Each and every one.

Always blue cars, Mama.

Always blue.

Your favorite color maybe -

I never asked, so I never knew

Why only ever blue cars?

She opens her mouth to reply

a motorcycle speeds by

a symphony of poorly shifted gears

exhaust clouds

as she gets up to get another drink

“…your favorite color, not mine.”

trailing off to disappear into

the rising hum of the cicadas as she went inside.