“The smell of an oily rag,” he began.

Slightly shaking, he fumbled with his notes as he looked out on the sea of faces. “That is what I remember most.”

“The football on the radio. Tools laid out on that old drop sheet on the garage floor. And that undeniable smell of sweat and oil. Gramps sure loved that old car!”

“I don’t know how many Saturday afternoons we spent working on that thing. More him working than me, of course.”

“I used to think I was just getting in the way, but whenever I said that, he’d stop what he was doing, wipe his brow with his forearm, and tell me that was nonsense. He always insisted that he needed my help.”

“Between checking spark plugs and changing oil, he would share stories of his life and ask questions about mine.  He was always interested to know what was going on.  How was I doing at school? Had I kicked any goals in footy? Were there any young girls on the horizon?”

“When those young girls came and heartbreak followed, I’d turn up on his doorstep, tears in my eyes, and he’d say, ‘Let’s go work on the car’.

That became a recurring phrase no matter what was getting me down. ‘Let’s go work on the car,’ he would say, and before too long my troubles seemed somehow less. ‘Nothing’s too broke that can’t be fixed,’ were words I heard many a time.”

“But I struggled to believe it. And I don’t know which came first, but I stopped going around there as well. I feared that there were no tools, no oily rags, no spark plugs to check or oil to change that could fix what I felt inside of me.”

“There was a darkness there that took me right to the edge, and over it.  But waking in a hospital room, his was the first face I saw.  Sitting there next to my bed, his hand on my arm. Day after day he would come.  Sometimes we would talk, other times he would just sit, doing the crossword from the daily paper.”

“No matter how many times I told him he didn’t need to come, he’d wave me away.  He’d hold up the crossword and insist he needed my help. That’s when I realised it was never about the car.”

“But it was that old car, polished and perfect, he drove us in from the church on our wedding day. It was that old car that would make my own children jump around excitedly whenever they saw it come in the driveway. And just before heaven called him home, it was that old car’s keys he placed in my hand.  ‘Your turn,’ he said.”

“So, I remember the smell of oily rags. I remember Saturday afternoons hearing his stories and sharing mine. But most of all, I remember someone who loved you so much, that you somehow learnt to love yourself.”

This piece won a prize in the Artz Blitz competition in February 2025. The theme of “Love Yourself” was released at 5:00pm on February 14th and the entries were due the next day.