With the impending arrival of our second child, my wife and I decided that we needed a larger vehicle. We needed to be able to schlep kids, grandparents, strollers, and lots of other stuff. So we became yet another suburban minivan family.
Long before a minivan was in our future, my wife had agreed that, should we ever get one, I could decorate it as a Star Trek style shuttlecraft. We did and, when they got older, my kids called it the nerdmobile. I loved my unique vehicle and the adventures we had in it!
Our first van lasted about seven years. The second one is in its fourteenth year. I drove car pools, took kids to and from overnight camp, went on road trips, and moved furniture, bikes, and everything in-between.
When I turned fifty, I bought myself a car and the van lost its place in the garage. It sits on the driveway. By that point, our younger child was driving, so it was convenient to have a third car. He could not get away with poor driving because everyone in our community recognized our special van!
Today, the van is parked in the driveway and is rarely driven. It got a few weeks of use when that younger child came home. We used it to take him to college. My wife used it when she took a few of her friends to Wisconsin. But most of the time, it sits there, waiting.
It waits for an occasion. It waits to be full of loud laughter again. It waits for another carpool or baseball game. It waits for the kids to come home. Me, too.
And that may be why I am so reluctant to let it go. Selling the van means facing the fact that those days are over. Of course, I have had to pay a lot of money to fix it when things go wrong. Older cars are much like older people; they need repairs regularly.
Yet, that isn’t the key issue. Although I would love to say I am hanging on to it because it is a special decorated Star Trek car, that isn’t the truth either. Selling the van is the end of an era. It says that the nest is empty. It says that the kids really live elsewhere. It says that our family’s childhood is over and it is time to move on.
It is, and I have such mixed feelings about that.
I rationalize the issue: even though we don’t drive the van much, it is nice to have a third vehicle when the kids are here. When one of the cars is in the shop, it is great to have a spare. Several friends have needed it. I use the van to take my Sunday school kids on field trips a few times a year. See, I need a van! I really do!
This summer, both kids came in for a visit. My folks joined us and we took the whole troupe downtown for a play and dinner. Once again, we rode together in the van. It was our family room on wheels again, possibly for the last time.
That is the truth the van’s presence in the driveway obscures. There are fewer and fewer times that the entire clan is together. There are no more car pools or school dances. No teams or casts or friend groups need a ride to the party. I haven’t been a minivan dad for a long time.
I enjoy driving my car. It has some fancy features that were not available when I bought the van. My son prefers driving the “new” car to the van. It has a great sound system, he says.
So I am researching selling the van. It will seek new worlds, and so will we. All of us will boldly go where we have not gone before: the next stage of development for our little family.
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