Lamby Time (Excerpt)

She couldn’t afford to buy a car until she was seventeen, but once she shucked enough quarters out of the couch cushions and changed a few thousand diapers, she finally purchased her Jeep, “Manny,” and affectionately named him after his elbow destroying manual crank windows. Manny was a bruise black 1999 clunker whose radio had been stolen before Corinne met him. He couldn’t go over fifty-five miles per hour or he’d shake. He coughed on cold mornings. He slept, the humble black sheep of a Jeep, beside the shimmering herds of white Mercedes in the high school parking lot. My sister couldn’t have loved any car more.

One Christmas my parents surprised Corinne by installing a radio in Manny, a lively heart for the beloved wagon. It hardly ever snowed on Christmas, let alone any day of the year, but that morning snowflakes fell like promises as Corinne and I sat in the car and listened to “Joy to the World.” Somebody should have scolded us for wasting gas or polluting the ozone layer. Nobody bothered. Corinne commanded the wheel in her terrycloth bathrobe, and though I was beginning to outgrow her hand-me-down pajamas, I wouldn’t have let them go for the world. I don’t know how long we stayed there in that 1999 Jeep Cherokee snow globe of happiness, listening to a brand new radio play old songs, but it seemed like forever.

This might be my favorite memory.