B1 THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2019 CONTACT US FOLLOW US Jonathan Williams editor@coastweekend.com facebook.com/ DailyAstorian SEA OF CHANGE, CONSTANT BLUE Photos by Ed Hunt Lindsay Hunt now drives the CRV we bought when she was fi rst born. By ED HUNT For The Astorian G The day after we brought the CRV home, we took it out to Fort Stevens. That is 2-month-old Lindsay looking out the back window (with Amy’s help.) “… WHAT WE’VE DONE, WHERE WE’VE BEEN, THE CARS THAT WE HAVE HAD HAVE BEEN THE FULCRUM OF OUR LIVES.” Leon Mandel The Hula Guy Lindsay put on the dashboard. Sending out graduation cards. RAYS RIVER, Wash. — “What are you going to do,” the mechanic asked. “drive this thing for 500,000 miles?” “Probably,” I said. “I can’t imagine ever letting it go.” We bought the little blue Honda CRV two months after my oldest daughter Lindsay was born. Next month, she graduates from high school. When my wife, Amy, and I were mar- ried, I was driving a Ed Hunt Volkswagen van and she had inherited her parents Volvo station wagon. Yet, when we got around to having kids, I was driving a two-door pickup and she had a Honda Civic coupe. I don’t think we are the only parents to have that sudden moment of anxiety, that realization that the nurses were handing us this baby, and expecting us to be responsible enough adults to keep it alive for 18 years. Our perspective of the world and its dangers, the meaning of our lives all changed as we walked out those hospital doors on a blue-sky February morning. With that hanging over us, driving home in a two-door coupe with a three- day-old baby strapped into her carseat in back, each logging truck and SUV on the road home from Astoria loomed over us and threatened our little Honda Civic with its precious cargo. I poured my nervous energy into researching small SUVs that would sit up high and be safer on the winter roads when we visited family in the Columbia River Gorge. We found a used 1997 Honda CRV that already had 80,000 miles on it, but the mechanic said it had been well-maintained and we liked sitting up higher, with the good vision of the road it provided. Moreover, it was much easier get- ting the baby in and out of the car seat in the back compared with crawling over the seat of the two-door coupe. When she fell asleep in her car seat, I didn’t wake her up trying to extract her. That was important, because Lind- say didn’t like going to sleep as a baby. There was too much to see and do. You had to keep her moving out in the world so she could experience new things. Movement was relaxing to her, so we would drive the blue CRV around the Grays River Valley with the soundtrack to “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” playing to send her off to dreamland. See CRV, Page B2