My Precious Day

(c) Celine Sparks, 2022

It started off right – just the normal hysteria. My husband was trying to get out the door when he realized our daughter, Mattianne, had a weekend trip on the agenda, and he wanted to put a quart of oil in her car. So in his hurry, he left the oil cap off. Hold that thought.

I was a bit rushed myself to deliver something to a friend. Mattianne was anxious to get on her trip, but her workday was still in the way, so the first chance she had, she darted off to Cullman, an hour and some change away, to finish her work there, so she’d be in between major cities come rush hour. After I got my goods delivered, I met my husband for a quick lunch, and we were just about to unload a filing cabinet from my car for his office when we each got a text asking if one of us would like to come to Cullman because Mattianne left her purse at home. She’s precious.

We weren’t all that worried because she had what she needed, except for her driver’s license. I said, “What are the chances of her getting pulled over?” Hold that thought. But my husband was pretty sure he didn’t want her on the road without the license, so I said I would go. We rushed to unload his filing cabinet. And that’s about when her car started smoking like a disco bar, and when she lifted the hood, she called to say, “Did you leave the oil cap off?” My husband had that look that either meant he suddenly distinctly remembered not screwing on an oil cap, or it meant the hot sauce had finally mixed with the sour cream in his gut.

So here came a detour for me before I even got started. I headed to the parts place that has the jingle “O, O, O, O’brother,” to get an oil cap and some oil to replace what was now all over whatever all those car parts are when you open your hood. The O’brother chain said they didn’t have one, but could get one by two o’clock. Hold that thought.

I thought that seemed like eternity in slow motion, so I asked him to check the Cullman store. The man scrolled down his computer for the better part of a college graduation, tapping numbers in once in a while and said, “It won’t let me in to check at that store.” I asked him if he had one of those telephone thingies. He called the Cullman store, and said, “Nope, they don’t have an oil cap.” Precious.

So I went to chain number two, which sounds a lot like an Advil with a dance on the end. I passed it twice before remembering where it was. I met a nice girl there, but it was her first day, meaning my cat could have done a better job. After several attempts at trying to understand what I needed - an oil cap, OIL CAP, O-I-L C-A-P for a Toyota Matrix - she found it. We thought. Hold that thought.

I rushed to Cullman, and got to the prettiest Christmas scene I’ve seen this December (it being December 1st and all), and my first thought was, “Oh no; is there about to be a parade on my already rain?” But it wasn’t that bad – the parade’s tomorrow – there just was no parking anywhere near the cute downtown where Mattianne was working in a coffee shop. She texted me that she was on mute mostly, but would be on an hour-long work call. I thought about just trying to figure out how to open the hood of her car myself, but I opted for two coffees totaling eleven dollars instead. When the hour expired, I walked to my car (two or three light years away) to get the oil cap. She had, in the meantime, cleaned up the oil mess, and said, “Well, at least I can drive you to your car now.” I told you she was precious. Hold that thought.

I handed her the new oil cap to crown our joint achievement. No fitty. It was like trying to fit a bedspread in a teacup. She googled to find there was an Auto Zombie close by. We started the long trek to my car to try the third auto parts store chain for the day. The nice older man (so precious) looked at the one I had bought earlier, and said, “This is a fuel cap; no wonder it didn’t work.” It was now 5:30 p.m., and to think, I had decided I would waste too much precious time if I waited until 2:00 to get the part at the first store.

And back to that license thing. What are the chances she would be pulled over? She called me before I got home tonight, and apparently, the chances are really, really good. Presh. Just presh.