a vehicle, part of the family

 

object or subject?

I just read that the Chinese don't have "it"

 as a word in their language,

and that makes me wonder about English

and how, maybe, Americans can easily slip into

treating something as object,

in French nouns have gender,

the sea is "la mer,"

do the French think of the ocean thusly

as more mother than a thing to be used as we want?

no more consequential in itself than sand?

all this comes to me as I consider our '91 Toyota Previa,

a mini-van that has been part of our family for 35 years,

which we bought just before our sons started college,

for we reasoned that we had at least 7 upcoming years

of working to pay the extra bills for the higher education,

and no plans to pay for another vehicle during that time,

I don't know how I feel about giving the van away,

do I have a personal attachment to the van,

or is the van a "thing"

to which I am no more connected than I am to a tool:

a hammer, a screwdriver, an object not a subject,

or is the van a member of the family?

a cousin about whom I will care after it leaves us?

if I were Chinese or French, how would I phrase that last question?

what pronoun would I use for a vehicle

that has been with us over a third of a century?

and which has enabled many trips and haulings?

should I be sad or happy that 

another might find a good partner in the Previa?

we named the Previa K.C.,

is it time to let "it" or "K.C." go?

how profound is the transition coming up?

as an old man I am sensitive to loss,

increasingly I feel that the world around me

is more "thou" than object,

I just went to take final pictures of K.C.,

I touched the van and cried,

I guess I have my answer:

object is really subject to me.

by Henry H. Walker

May 11, ‘26