The Minivan

Once upon a time I drove a mostly tidy car. There were notebooks and pens within easy reach of the driver’s seat and a bundle of extra clothes, a warm blanket, and other essentials stashed in the back. These days I drive a minivan, which is basically a mobile extension of the family mudroom – and just as disheveled.

Minvan cargo: Life preservers, jumper cables, and PB&J.

Now, at the start of summer, there are tennis balls and soccer balls rolling around the back of the minivan. They share that space with a boogie board or two, some swim goggles, and a collection of chocolate-smeared paper napkins left from our last outing to a favorite ice cream joint. On any given day, you might also find a wayward soccer cleat, a bottle of sunscreen escaped from the pool bag, and sweatshirts discarded between cool mornings and the heat of midday.

And sand. Sand from the river, sand from the beach, sand from the driveway. Sand is pretty much a constant in my car, along with Goldfish crumbs scattered about the floor, wayward water bottles, seemingly random rocks collected along our travels, and the occasional sock wedged under a seat.

While the mess within can be maddening, I have come to love the minivan, in large part for its ability to (mostly) contain the ever-evolving craziness of life with kids. It was not always this way. In fact, I was horrified when I realized I might need to drive a “mama mobile,” this vehicle that so clearly broadcasts domesticity and parenthood.

I was a pickup truck girl in high school, and there is a photo of me in the yearbook posing proudly by my little Chevy S-10. During my college years, tired of driving the six-plus hours to and from campus to leave me and retrieve me, my parents bought me a used Ford Bronco II – a truck-car so awesome they don’t make it anymore. I drove that boxy gas-guzzler from New England to Upstate New York and back a bunch of times, then out to Colorado after college. I drove it until fourth gear quit working, then I drove it another year or so, jumping from third gear to fifth on the rare occasion I needed it while driving the winding mountain roads.

                                                                                                                                   

When the Bronco II was completely used up, I bought a used Subaru. That little car could go anywhere, through any weather. I drove it around town, then across the country loaded down with all my worldly belongings when I moved back East, then to work gigs and fun outings until it started sputtering. The Subaru-wannabe I bought next, brand new, carried me from life as a single girl right into motherhood. Two infant car seats fit snugly in the backseat, and there was space for the dog in the way back. The gas mileage was good, and the car was sufficiently, I believed, sporty – and roomy. Until kid number three was on the way.

I distinctly remember standing in my parents’ driveway, while retrieving kids number one and two from a visit, and lamenting the fact that I was trading in my car – for a minivan. “There goes my image,” I told my mom.

She looked at me with something bordering on pity. I’m not sure if it was because I was soon to enter the wild and sleepless world of a third child under the age of 3 or because I was quite obviously delirious. Image? I don’t know what image I thought I had then, but it certainly wasn’t one of any sort of hipness. Most of the time I had two toddlers clinging to me, an array of dog fur and partially eaten kid food stuck to my yoga pants, and the disheveled hair and overwhelmed look moms of toddlers often sport. I was also quite obviously pregnant. Whatever image I thought I owned had long since shifted irreversibly.

My mother tried to assure me that minivans were just fine. We’d had one of the original models when I was a kid, the first post-wood-paneled station wagon to serve as the standard American family car. That little Dodge Caravan had ferried us to ski races and soccer games and hauled the entire family and our pop-up camper on an epic cross-country adventure.

The minivan has come a long way since those early years – automatic doors, folding seats to create various seating options, cruise control, and more cup holders than any seven passengers could possibly need. After nearly eight years of ferrying our family and all its stuff, my van is not the gleaming silver bullet of family transport it once was. There are dings in the body and rust creeping along the wheel wells, and the doors long ago stopped being automatic.

But it can still hold soccer balls for two teams in the fall (along with several soccer players). It carries our family’s quiver of skis – and skiers – come winter. And last summer we figured out how to fit all five of our bikes – and all five of us – within it. Call it what you will – Mama Mobile, Party Van, Adventure Wagon, Family Car. The minivan may not be hip, but it gets the job done, and I’m good with that.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the June 24, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Steering through mud season

A friend remarked recently that he’s encountered “frost heaves deep enough to swallow a Hybrid” on local roads. By necessity, I drive a minivan, which is significantly harder to consume than a Prius. But that’s a great bit of imagery, and I think any of us who travels the roads this time of year can relate to the challenge of steering through the potholes and frost heaves of spring, or, as we so fondly call it, Mud Season.

My own road, which turns from rough pavement to narrow dirt one sharp turn before our driveway, is worse this year than I’ve ever seen it. The paved – and I use that term loosely, for there’s more sand and crumbling than pavement at this point – section of the road has decayed to a series of kitchen sink- and bathtub-sized potholes that fill with water and connect to form a virtual minefield for drivers. I’ve accepted that it takes an extra few minutes now to maneuver the half-mile from our house to the state highway at the end of our road.

Even that highway is no guaranteed easy travel route. A few weeks back we had to go the long – and bumpy – route home after a sinkhole large enough to swallow a minivan opened up in the middle of the road. The highway crew got in there and patched it up quickly, but there’s now a wide strip of gravel the breadth of the road where there should be pavement.

Going down the hill from home is out of the question for me. My husband likes the challenge of steering through slippery, gooey troughs of mud bordered on each side by ditches that are easily deep enough to swallow a hybrid or a minivan. But he drives a pickup these days and has the option of 4-wheel drive. I, on the other hand, chauffeur a gaggle of sometimes-rowdy children in a front-wheel drive minivan. I’m leaving the snow tires on until after mud season; I figure I need all the extra traction I can get.

The muddy ruts act like a vortex, sucking cars in so that there’s no exit until the ruts peter out to washboarded gravel. Last year the town road crew, in an effort to make the road passable in mud season, dropped a load of large stones on the two worst sections of the road, which happened to be directly above and just below our driveway. The stones filled in the ruts, alright, but made for an excruciatingly jarring drive. I can’t imagine it was much fun for the guys who dropped them there, either, as they had to dig the stones out to grade the road a month later.

The other morning we woke to a fresh layer of spring snow, just enough white to provide a superficial cover on the road and turn that half-mile stretch into a game of memory: zig hard here, zag gently there, watch out for the dip straight ahead. At least on the road to my daughter’s preschool the frost heaves are obvious. Forget hybrids, these monsters look as if they’ve swallowed a VW bus. The swollen pavement lurches to the right, then swoops to the left – right through a pothole, of course.

I keep thinking I ought to wash my car, but what would be the point? It would just get covered in mud again the next time I left the driveway. Our house is currently surrounded by a mud moat. The kids don’t seem to mind. They’ve hauled the sandbox toys out of the garage and gone to work digging through the top layer of sand – the bottom is still frozen solid. To get to the sandbox – or the garage – they have to traipse through muddy puddles. To get anywhere, they have to traipse through muddy puddles.

And so the house is filled with muddy snow boots, muddy muck boots, muddy snow pants and jackets, and muddy paw prints from the dog. Ah, well. It’s mud season, that time of year where the weather is anything but predictable, and we’re guaranteed our fair share of bumps in the road. Just get out the hose and the broom and make mud pies. After all, black fly and tick season will be here soon enough.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted on her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears in the April 5, 2013 edition of the Record Littleton.