Adventures with Joy

She came into my life in 2000. I was only 16. We had a love/hate relationship for four years, and after eight years of being apart, she still runs smoothly in my mind (at least).

There are two types of car owners in the world—those who name their cars and those who don’t. Well, my family’s affection for our first car was so strong we called her Joy.

Joy, our 1994 Tamaraw FX, had a very promising beginning. In all her secondhand strength, she endured the travel from Makati to Ortigas four times a day every day for a few years. Joy was my warm welcome from a long day of lectures and clinical exposures at Makati Medical Center, and on those nights when my mama was too tired to cook, she gladly took us to the nearest Kowloon House. Some weekends, she hauled our rowdy dogs to the vet.

While my friends talked about their Expeditions, Troopers, or Pajeros, I had Joy—and she was more than enough. She took us to weddings, baptisms, birthdays and burials, and because she had no power-steering capability, plus the fact that we lived in a dead-end street, she gave my dad the best bicep workout for free.

But perhaps it’s true that things with the most promising beginnings have the worst endings. In 2004, Joy stopped in the middle of a street in Makati at 5 a.m. when I was on my way to the hospital for my clinical rotation. Imagine me in my gray Florence Nightingale uniform trying to push a car so the engine would start. That I was both scared and embarrassed is an understatement.

From then on, Joy’s visits to the  talyer  became more and more frequent. She was sucking up all the money from our  alkansya. The situation got so bad my mama actually decided to call her “Sorrow.”

The never-ending repair fees, plus the burden of our college education, pushed our parents to sell our first car for only a few thousand pesos. Sad reality, it was. Three years later, my father saw her on JP Rizal Street with her new owner/driver. Was she a Joy or a Sorrow at that time?

Fast forward to July 28, 2012. After eight years of being literally empty except for the usual  timba,  batya  and the big water tank, our garage was to finally serve its purpose! The occupant: a chestnut-red, 2012 Adventure Super Sport, fresh out of the  casa! The seat cover is white because she will be a family car in every sense—no more  pasada  to Megamall, and no more rentals! I was told that she would make a trip to Vigan for her “break-in.”

All this time, we have yet to be formally introduced. But I know exactly what to say once we meet at the airport a few months from now: “Joy? Is that you?”

Vanessa Austral, 27, was a nurse at the Philippine General Hospital for three years. She has been working at Basildon Hospital in the United Kingdom for three years.