Washing and waxing--the best ritual

One of my favorite things to do is to wash and wax a car.  Part of this is because it happens at Jamie's house, where Jamie, his dad, and I work together hosing down the car in question and soaping it up, rinsing, hand-drying, and waxing it.   It's excellent bonding time.  The tires get a treatment, the hubcaps get a scrubbing, the undercarriage, everything, obviously.  Have you just been on a road trip?  NO.  Is it pollen season?  NO.  Are you going to be driving through a grass driveway soon and tossing up dirt and grass up on your newly clean undercarriage?   NO.  WAY.   Cleaning a car really well is to, for one precious and beautiful moment, deny the reality of daily wear-and-tear on your vehicle and to put up a defiant barrier (wax!) against all the wear-and-tear that you know, deep down, is still going to keep happening.

So there's that denial aspect.

Also it's just really, really pleasing to see a car (especially a car you truly love) go from a shameful and hideous appearance to near showroom quality over the course of an hour or two.  All the bugs on the grill are scrubbed away (my apologies little guys), all the ambiguous bird waste is washed away with the soapy grossness, all the “I really hope that's not a scratch”-es (or at least most of them) are coaxed off with a soft washrag, brake dust around the hubcaps is mercilessly done away with, tail lights are shined up a little, dusty grimy spaces under spoilers are invaded and cleared up, and even the little hollows under your door handles get a friendly hello.  Really thoroughly cleaning a car you love is a wonderful occasion.  If you time it right, you do it with other people.  But whether you do it alone or not, washing and waxing a car is a ritual.  It's a giving of thanks to the powers that be that you have a car.  It's a tribute to the free time you have (or that you made) that you're using to clean the car.  It's a sacrifice of sorts to the car itself—sure, I could take it to a dollar car wash, but I care about the integrity of the paint.   Besides, I want a very thorough wash and I know I'm going to want to wax it anyway.  Why waste money when I can spend time on my car (my favorite possession) making it look exactly the way I want?

And then finally, you get that moment where it's all done.  The car's been washed and dried, the wax has been applied and then buffed out to a really lovely shine.  You can see your legs mirrored in the doors of the car.  You stand around with whoever you washed the car with and gloat about how awesome the car looks.  And even if you know you'll wake up the next morning and it will be covered in pollen, and you know that you'll be leaving to go back to Atlanta (a six-hour drive) and collecting bugs along the way, that minute when the car is actually clean is something to truly value, as is the process that got you there.

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Bonus points—later, weeks after you've expended all that effort waxing the car, water will still bead up on it when it rains and you will be reminded of how awesome you are and how awesome your car is!