All of us had found it difficult to remember a time when the car didn’t smell like stale french fries. It wasn’t until one hot day when the french fry stench seemed so much stronger that I asked my mother why it smelled that way. She explained to me that her old boss had given her a gallon of soy sauce and she accidentally spilled it all over the floor of the family car and no matter how hard she had tried to scrub it away, the smell remained. The shiny silver Cougar had always been in our driveway, as far as I was concerned. There were other cars throughout our family’s history, but those only seemed to be around for a few years before a new one came along. The Cougar would stay forever, as permanent as any other member of the family.

It only had two doors, which at first wasn’t an issue. My mother would open the passenger door to reveal the spacious backseats. My brother Martin would always go in first, his spot right behind the driver’s seat where my dad could be found. My place was directly behind my mother. The middle seat was left empty for grocery bags or stuffed animals until my second brother, Omar, came along to occupy it. His view was not of one of the backs of our parents’ heads peeking through the headrests of the front seats, but of the center of the car. The smooth leather gear shift, the radio, the front window, our parents’ arms and profiles were all visible from the middle seat. Yet every once in a while one of us, usually Omar stuck in the middle, would get tired of the established seating arrangement and try to sneak his way into the car first. All Martin and I would have to say to our little brother was “you know the rules” and we’d be back in the same order we had always been.

The Cougar’s interior was predominantly grey, and either leather or upholstery. All of the seats were made up of these two materials, the middle of the seats soft with the rest smooth from the leather. My mother would complain that no matter what the weather was, these seats were never comfortable. The moment any exposed skin came into contact with the leather in the car during Southern California summers would result in immediate recoil and a yelp of pain. The upholstery did nothing to help, but instead felt like a stuffy blanket on your back that was just collecting all your sweat. During the winter the leather seats would absorb all the cold and my parents would rub their hands together furiously before even thinking about touching the steering wheel. They both refused to turn on the AC during the summer, instead rolling down the windows, letting the warm air come in, and saying they didn’t even have air conditioning where they grew up and it was much hotter there. It was only during the winter mornings when the windshield was covered in a thin layer of ice and they had to drop us off at school and head to work that they’d turn on the heat.

The car was purchased before my parents had any kids. Right around when the license plates needed to be renewed was when their first child was born. My father was apparently so excited to be a dad that he decided to get his new license plates personalized to say “IL GAONA”. By the time I could read and actually understand what license plates were, the plates named after me had been replaced and put somewhere in the garage. As far as I knew, the license plates had always said “EDO MICH” which was short for “Estado de Michoacan”. Whenever I’d be playing in my neighborhood with the Cougar parked in our driveway, my friends would ask what the license plate meant. Usually I’d just shrug my shoulders to try and avoid the complicated explanation that would be needed for them to understand that my dad was apparently so proud of his hometown in Mexico that he needed to replace my name.

There was rarely a time when music was not playing in the Cougar. My parents kept a stack of CDs and a few tapes in the middle console and there was always a black leather CD case in the glove compartment filled with Spanish albums that I could only recognize by sound but not name. When my father installed a new stereo system in the car he had us all get in to check it out. It looked so sleek and black and shiny compared to the rest of the car. I remember pressing the small button on the right hand corner of the stereo that would make it pop out and forward to reveal the CD slot and then pushing the stereo back in to repeat the same process over and over again until my father told me I would break it. This stereo actually had a screen that could tell you what song and artist was playing, but what I found most interesting was that the screen could change colors. No matter what song was playing, the screen could find the beat and change color accordingly. On long drives or stop lights that seemed to be stuck on red I would stare at the glowing screen and try to guess what color would appear next.

It was the car we always rode in to go on any trip. Multiple times throughout the year my mother would wake us up just as the sun was starting to rise and pile us into the backseat of the car with some blankets, a pillow, and some empty grocery bags for my sensitive stomach. My father would put the two suitcases that were needed for a five person weekend trip in the trunk, adjust his baseball cap, and start driving the seven hours up north to his brother’s house while munching on an apple.

My mother would try to get us to fall back asleep, but my eyes always refused to close again. Instead I’d spend my time stuck in the Cougar looking out the window at scenery, feeling comforted these remote places I’d driven past countless times were still there with little change, even after months of not seeing them. Martin and I would know we were at the halfway point when we saw the Dr. Seuss hat. In reality, it was a red and white striped silo, but its colors and stature had determined its name in our family. The dark blue flower store that for some unknown reason also had a portrait of Tweety Bird painted on it was how I would know we had finally arrived in Redwood City. The Cougar would be parked in our uncle’s apartment complex garage and as soon as we’d open the doors our cousins would be outside greeting us and urging us to come inside and out of the car.

My parents’ long drive conversations is how I first learned to measure love. I was always in awe at their ability to keep a conversation going through the majority of our drives to Redwood City. They always seemed to find something new to talk to each other about during these seven hours, and I wondered how this was possible for two people that had been together since high school. Even during the rare lull in conversation, it still felt as if they were communicating to each other. This is still how I measure all of my relationships, the ease of conversation and the comfort of silence.

In the winter of sixth grade the five of us and my Redwood City uncle’s family all went to Mexico for a month. Both sets of parents thought it would be more fun if we drove down, so that is how we found ourselves riding in the Cougar for three days. The first night was spent in an Arizona rest stop. While the adults and two three year olds were asleep in cars Martin, our two cousins (Jenny and Jessy), and I hung out in between the Cougar and our cousin’s car. It was dark out and felt extremely late for an eleven year old to be up. There was nothing but desert all around us and we started wondering about rattle snacks and scorpions, realizing how vast our surroundings really were. Eventually the four of us went back into the safety of our cars to try and fall asleep.

Actually crossing the United Sates border into Mexico was a blur to me, but driving through the Mexican forest remains clear. I never expected Mexico to have any forest, so when the roads started to curve around mountains and it became impossible to see the tops of trees I was in awe. We all rolled down our windows to breathe in the fresh forest air and the faint sound of water running could be heard, but no matter how far out the window I looked I could not actually see any.

The final leg of the drive into Michoacan was a sigh of relief. After being cramped up in the Cougar for seventy-two hours, all of us had had enough. My father rolled down all of the windows, let in some crisp air and evening sun rays, and blasted Madonna’s Greatest Hits on the stereo. Jenny was in the car with us and we stuck our feet outside the car window letting the wind move them wherever it pleased; my parents ignoring the fact that this was clearly dangerous, too preoccupied with being back in the place they grew up.

I had found myself behind the wheel of the family car plenty of times, but usually that was when it was parked in our driveway or I was waiting for my mother to finish running errands. I was finally old enough to start learning how to drive and had been casually hinting at my parents that they should take me. It was one of those rare times where it was just my dad and I in the car, the radio playing softly, and neither one of us talking. I was staring out the passenger window, arm leaning against the warm glass watching as we got closer to our house. My dad pulled into the neighborhood gas station and after filling up the tank asked if I wanted to drive the rest of the way home.

He got out of the car and held the driver’s side door open for me, but my legs started to feel too shaky to get out—let alone press on pedals. My dad could feel my reluctance and reminded me that I had practically been groveling to get behind the wheel and that the drive would be “over before I knew it.” The driver’s seat felt like a plush throne that I was too small for. From this new vantage point I could notice the cracks in the leather seat, the chips on the dashboard, all of the slight wear the Cougar had acquired over the years. I could barely reach the large gas or brake pedals with my legs and it seemed like my fingertips were just grazing the stiff steering wheel. Peering out the windshield, the hood seemed to stretch far beyond its actual size making it impossible for my 5’1” frame to see anything coming up ahead. Contrary to what years of television had taught me, I quickly realized that the steering wheel did not need to be jerked around in order for the Cougar’s wheels to turn. I kept biting the right line of the road and I could tell my father was getting a bit frustrated from repeatedly telling me to move over, so I started to speed up in order to get home faster. Driving up the hill that led to our street I could feel all the weight of the Cougar moving ahead, its ability to propel forward without me became all too clear.

A couple of months later I found out we were moving to Northern California and the Cougar was being sold to a friend of my father’s. The final few weeks spent in Southern California were without the Cougar. The last time I saw it my mother and I were walking towards our new white four-door car in a grocery store parking lot. My mom pointed to the street up ahead and said, “Look, it’s our car!” The Cougar was driving away from us and I only caught a glimpse of the man in the front seat that was not my father or anyone I could call family.