Mark does his first car repair

My son decided to vacuum and wash his small family station wagon before he drove back home to New Orleans. Next thing I knew, my husband was out there with him, car jacked up and the two underneath.
When they slid out and stood up, father passed the torch of car repair to his son: a car repair manual written specifically for any problem possible with that car’s year and model.
I don’t know why he bothered: Car repair has never interested that son.
Car work took longer than anticipated. Washing up afterward ensured a late start back home. The only good thing was that the baby was asleep and not fighting to be released from her car seat.
It was the wee hours of the morning before they crossed the bridge into New Orleans. As they rounded the corner onto the street to their apartment, something snapped loudly. The clutch did not respond: They drove the last half-mile home in second gear, parked and collapsed into bed. The car problem could wait. They had lived 15 months without a car. A couple of more days without one was not a problem.
When they called to talk about it, his wife said repair shops were estimating it would cast them $120 to repair the cable to the clutch.
Still in the early years of poverty, a $120 car repair did not fit into their budget. My son decided to follow the instruction is in the car manual and fix it himself.
I envisioned nuts, bolts, mysterious engine parts and tools strewn haphazardly on the ground. I bit my tongue until my vision reduced to “well if you can’t repair it yourself, I guess you can take it to a shop to be repaired.” Just what every mechanic dreads getting — a car with half its guts hanging out after an amateur tires to fix it.
The next night son’s wife called, “He couldn’t fix it. The problem was more than putting in a $60 part. We have decided to leave it alone and walk for a few months until we afford to get it fixed.”
I sighed thinking about a perfectly good car just sitting for months. I imagined them taking a box of car parts to the mechanic.
I envisioned her struggling to carry an energetic 13 month-old and sacks of groceries. I was quite emphatic, “Get it fixed now.”
“I was just teasing. He already fixed it, in three hours all by himself.”
My son took the phone from her, “I spent an hour trying to figure out which parts to disconnect. It took an hour to replace it once I figured that out and another hour to put it all together again.”
His wife burst in, excited and proud of her husband, “Popsie’s giving us that book was providential. He did what the book said and fixed our car.”
The next couple of days, his feet barely touched the earth as he reveled in his accomplishment. I should have had more faith – but, he had never fixed anything more complicated than the gears on his street bikes.
That day, my son became a man – repairer of his family car, sacrificing and working to ensure his wife and child rode in a car while he rode his bike to work.