Return of the Car

"Slow down a moment," squealed the car.
We had not seen it in weeks: it was fresh from a long, mysterious trek across the country, had just been delivered to our doorstep and was in a most frightful panic.
"I feel dizzy. Tell me: where on earth am I now?"
"California," said Spouse, heaving a box from the trunk.
"Wait. That's not right." The car appeared to frown in the intense sunlight. "Didn't I start out there- I mean here? Years ago?"
I remarked, while clutching a vacuum cleaner and a beaver-bitten chunk of a forest in Maine, "welcome home."
"But how?" exclaimed the bewildered car. "Didn't we drive together, the three of us, across deserts and mountains and purple plains, all the way to Texas? Didn't we do that?"
"We did," said Spouse, a trifle wistfully.
"I was ever so hot there. And we stayed a while- and then, just as I was getting used to everything, off we went again- east, wasn't it?"
"East," muttered Spouse, his arms full of cardboard.
"Then- then what happened? I remember lots of snow, whole flurries of it, and being jolted frequently by strangers- and a long, strange while in which nobody at all came to visit me. I had aches more often than not. Then what did we do?"
"Then," replied Spouse, "why- then we came home."
"Home," said the car softly, winking and sighing as it settled a bit, finding its feet on familiar land. "Ah, yes, I remember Home."