Ode to the TR-3

A few years before my parents got divorced, my father bought this 1962 Triumph TR-3B convertible. It was drivable when he bought it, but there was plenty to do to get and keep this beautiful beast in tip-top shape. I have many fond memories of working on this car with my father in the garage. He did nearly everything himself, opting for professional help only when the equipment or expertise were beyond him (such as when the body needed to be repainted or part of the frame re-welded). It was a dark period in my family's history--the divorce and then my mother and I moving back East to live with her parents in New Jersey. I was out of place and isolated in the rural Kansas school where I went and had few friends. I had a slightly better school experience in High School in New Jersey, but it wasn't until College that I really hit my social stride.

In the mean time there was always the Triumph. When my dad moved from Kansas to Seattle he decided to drive the TR the whole distance of the move. I was living in NJ already, but flew out to meet up with him in Denver. It was a real road-trip in a real roadster. I got sunburned on my already receding-hairline (at 16!). I even remember that I was reading an analysis of the leadership style of six famous generals as we drove. The Triumph was always one of the characters in the relationship between my father and myself.

It was also a link between my grandfather, my father, and myself. The first Moss TR-3 was purchased by my grandfather straight off the assembly line in England. He picked it up while on Vacation with his wife (Betsy) and then took it across the channel to France. He told me once that he got the sports car up to about 100 MPH on the Autobahn while Betsy was asleep next to him. He was a pilot and had a pilot's affection for going fast, but in control, in well engineered steel. He eventually gave or sold the car to my father, who gave it up only after a few years of marriage. The second Moss TR-3 had to wait until us kids were in school and out from under foot.

When my dad moved from Seattle to his parent's coffee farm in Hawai'i, he flirted with the idea of giving me the TR3, but discovered that it wasn't as expensive to ship it 2670 miles (4296 km) as he thought. The TR-3 was well suited to life at the Aina na Hoku Kai Farm: going down the mountain for quick shopping excursions and around the windy mountain roads for the monthly meetings of the Kona Coffee Council and the Kona Coffee Farmers Association. But when I last visited the farm about a year ago I noticed that the car was showing more wear and tear than he usually allowed, and I realized that he was probably not far from giving it up. I told him to let me buy it before anyone else. I got to take it out a few times on that trip with my Betsy. The other Betsy Moss would have been pleased.

On a Sunday trip to the local Episcopal Church (Christ Church, Kona) a local woman recognized it as a favorite car of her young adulthood. She was a stewardess for Pan Am (she even flew with "Captain Moss" a few times) and used to leave her TR3 in the airport parking lot for weeks at a time. She said it would always start up reliably. "I loved that car. I was so upset with my brother wrecked it." Small world.

So it was disappointing to learn from my dad last night that he had sold the TR-3 to a local friend after 20 years of proud ownership. He said that the opportunity arose to sell it to someone who would take care of it rather than some kid he was likely to get through a classified ad. He knew I would want it, but thought it was too much of a hassle to transport it across half the pacific and then most of the continent. I never had the chance to convince him otherwise, so another chapter closes in my personal history--a link to my forefathers and to the better parts of a troubled childhood.

Let's not get too sad about it. The troubles of my childhood are essential to the best parts of me now. If I hadn't gone through those years of pain I would probably be a computer programmer somewhere with a geeky hobby rather than a ninja priest chasing the Holy Ghost down the rabbit holes of ordained ministry (still with a geeky hobby, though). Or maybe I would have--who knows. Anyway, loss is loss.

Loss is also initiation into the world of adulthood. "When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways," says Paul. Everybody has their pot of grief to stir. Carl Jung, among many others, believed that these kinds of experiences of loss were a necessary resource for mature life. I agree completely. Something about loss integrates us spiritually in a way that joy cannot. Very often, people who have experienced loss can have major strong ju-ju for healing others--not necessarily because they can empathize, but because their loss connects them to something beyond themselves. What's really cool is when you start talking about trans-personal grief--shared or inherited loss. Tie into those trunk lines to find serious emotional and spiritual wattage.

David Whyte, one of my favorite poets, uses the image of a "well of grief" whose murky depths must be explored in order to find the treasure concealed in the muddy earth below...

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface of the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown away by those who wished for something else.
--David Whyte "The Well of Grief" in Close to Home

That's the good stuff. That's what we lock away in the tabernacle behind the altar every week, the memory of our collective Christian grief at the death of Christ. The promise of communion.

Last night, I heard John Stewart challenge a Harvard professor of psychology who teaches people how to be happy about whether happiness is truly good for us. The professor didn't give an interesting answer, in my opinion. Because the truth is that grief does do some good things for us, yet how many have the courage to go that place unless they have no other choice?

So... good bye TR-3. You were a good friend. And we'll miss you.

-t