Defined by a van?

When I was pregnant with Darcy we bought a 1997 Plymouth Grand Voyager from an older couple whose son worked in the service department of the dealership where they bought the van.  They were a sweet couple giving us a nice price and documentation of work done on the van and giving Madison a stuffed animal.  The van was a year and a half old at the time so we still had the manufacturer warranty and we purchased another two years on top of that.  It has been the greatest vehicle hauling around kids and car seats over the last thirteen years.  Two years ago after some minor repairs Tom talked about replacing it.  I assumed he meant with another van, but he thought that silly and too big for our current needs.  I had a hard time with that.

The van represented in a way who I was as a stay-at-home-mother and not having that symbol left me searching for an identity.  I spent many days thinking of how soon my kids would be off discovering themselves and their new lives, leaving me behind tooling along in an oversized, empty vehicle.  Not liking that scenario one bit I chose to ignore the whole situation and instead urged Tom to fix the van.  "This is a great car," I argued.  "As long as it's running why spend big bucks on another one?"  The van, I reasoned, would keep my kids dependent on me and my job secure.

Last May the van began having issues, stalling on me when idling at lights.  We had some small repairs done, but while the problem would disappear for while it always reappeared.  Before Halloween it got worse stalling on me four times in one day.  We had two different repair places look at it with one wanting to make a huge air conditioning repair and the other repairing minor things and not finding a reason for the stalling.  The next stalling episode after the repairs the service guys kept it running on the block all day and found nothing.  I told them I wasn't imagining it nor was I crazy.  They told me they were sure I wasn't either, but they were clueless.  It got to the point that I was scared to turn left suddenly for fear the van would stall and I would get hit by oncoming traffic.  I certainly did not want my teenager behind the wheel of the van.  I was going to have to think about another car.

I am not a car person.  I don't know one car from another.  I'm a bit familiar with different types of vans and that's only because most of my friends drive them.  Tom wanted me to narrow down a list of vehicles I would be interested in so I turned to my friend the Internet.  For several days I read articles on family vehicles and searched Auto Trader sites.  I stuck mostly with SUV type vehicles thinking it would make the transition easier.  Kelly and I ran errands one weekend and we drove through parking lots looking at various vehicles.  When I saw something I liked I wrote it down.  Meanwhile my neighbor bought his wife a Kia Soul.  His friend had one and he had done all this research on it the last year.  Tom took one look and scoffed at it until he got into it and realized it had quite a lot of room.

I spent considerable time working the Internet on various car sites with the list of cars I had narrowed down.  I test drove a few of them.  The Soul was by far my favorite because not only did it have room, and drove well, but it ranked number one for a family car and for first time drivers.  I was hooked.  Tom, however, was not.  He decided what we should do was wait and in the meantime switch cars.  He would drive the van for two weeks and I would drive his Buick.

I agreed because I wanted him to experience the stalling and other issues and agree with me on the Soul.  I grudgingly transferred most of my belongings into the Buick and got use to lowering my long limbs to get into the Fred Flintstone car.  That was in November.  In the first two weeks the van never stalled, according to my husband.  It never did anything but work.  Those two weeks went into two more weeks and still the van continued running perfectly.  A little over a month into the switch the van acted up with all of us in the car.  "It must be you," my husband decided.  "What the hell are you doing to it?" my neighbor inquired.

Four months later I am still driving the Buick.  I have quit asking about the van.  The kids tell me when it acts up when they are in it.  Every once in a while I pat it and tell it I miss it.  I have managed in the smaller car hauling Madison and Darcy and transporting students to various activities.  I like the big trunk for my groceries and beach chair.  I like not filling it with gas as often.  I don't like not being in the garage, but I'm learning to live with that.  I realized the other day that now when I'm walking to and from the Buick in parking lots I'm checking out smaller cars instead of SUV's.   Perhaps I'm learning to define myself by something other than by the vehicle I drive.  Perhaps this is just one of those first steps I have to take into my new job as something other than a mother when the girls head out on their own.  Or perhaps I just need a new car to be happy.  It is a mystery for sure.