Now I’m still reading Chapter Six of Part One, Planting Sweetgrass, in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass. The chapter is titled, “Learning the Grammar of Animacy.”

She’s talking about her struggles to learn her ancient tribal language, Potawatomi. Almost no one speaks it, maybe seven people, and it has almost disappeared forever, like so many lost things.

She’s talking about the way things and objects in English are nouns, but in Potawatomi they are alive and need a living language that breathes and has a pulse.

I put a bookmark on the page and close the book. I sit for awhile and let my mind loose.

Kristina names things. She calls her car Misty. It’s a Camry. Her first big motorcycle is Bluebell. Their truck is Hidalgo because it never let them down.

Things become animate, sometimes even people. They are not just objects. They are alive. They have personalities. They interact. She lives with them together. They are her friends. They are family.

She says, “What’s your car’s name, Dad? What do you call her?” Already she has established the gender.

I say, “Well, I never, I don’t really…”

So I sit in my chair, prompted by Kimmerer, and think about my car. I don’t want to name it, not yet, but I realize how close we have become.

I love my car. It loves me back. When I clean it, it gleams. I feed it when it’s hungry, and it purrs.

Sometimes when I start in the morning, it’s still cold and gruffly clears its throat. Then it lowers its voice, humms, and off we go together.

When we’ve been driving for awhile and it’s hot outside and inside too, I turn a knob and it gives me cold air. I aim it at my face, and if the breeze is too strong for comfort, I adjust the vent and angle it away and the car fills itself with tempered air just for me.

We go places together and it waits for me, patiently, lovingly, always there when I come back. It opens for me, takes me in. When I get out and caress the seat back with my hand, it smiles and caresses back.

It drives as fast as I want to go. It is accommodating to my friends. It carries my family. It straps me in to keep me safe. It adjusts my seat so we fit perfectly together.

It modestly lowers its eyes at night in deference to anyone oncoming, and shines ahead on a dark open road.

It tells me it understands that chapter in the book about the animacy of language. It reminds me of the poem I recommended to and shared with my students by the Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, about the sadness of armchairs.

It waits outside my window, tells me it will be there for me in the morning, and nudges me to pick up my book and finish reading the chapter.

I check its tires like a podiatrist. They hold their pressure for me, for my smooth ride, my non-swerving cling to the road.

It maintains a little glove box for my secret documents and opens at a touch. It holds the cup I’m drinking from, like the beautiful girl who offers the stirrup cup to the handsome young man riding on the horse, and I am that young man, and she is my horse. Sort of.

All cars I have ever owned have been one car, the same car, identical in their loved and loving carishness. They may change their raiment, their appearance, their vesture, their origin, but they remain what they are, even as I remain what I am to them, their guardian, their driver, their mentor, their reason for being what they are being mine.

Long ago, they chose the word to name them. Their name is Volvo. Volvo became all cars to us. The world agreed in Universal Approbation and hailed Volvo as the World’s Safest Car, the best way to protect your family on the roads of life.

Automobiles know me. Every car I’ve ever borrowed, loaned, ridden in, is the same car and I love them all. And they all forgive me for my shortcomings, they know me so well. They commiserate with each other in their knowing, the way trees talk to each other through their roots in the earth, through the air that passes their leaves and branches, as everything on earth unifies itself.

I know I could go on and on and on as I already have on this subject, but I’m neglecting my book which got me started and sidetracked. So I put down my pen, pick up the book, and see if I can at least finish the chapter.

It’s very good. Does not disappoint.

Though, afterthought, there was that one time when I slept in the car overnight. Shirley and I had been arguing over I don’t know what and I wouldn’t leave and stubbornly parked in front of her house and cracked open the window so I could breathe, and huddled in my jacket cold all night and in the morning, very unrested, I gave up and did a U turn, barely brushing the car parked across the street, and the teenage guys like a gang were very nice about it and said, “No problem, we’ve got so many scratches already, no need to involve insurance or police,” and my car took me down the street quickly around the corner.

All cars love me, and none has killed me yet.

I pat the car, “Good Girl!” and paste the new registration sticker on the rear license plate.