Your car could fit in my car
No, I don’t do daycare.
I can’t give you a lift to the airport or the ski resort, either. The tinted windows aren’t hiding well-behaved felons on their way to pick up roadside litter, nor am I a private investigator with cameras mounted to catch indiscretions and fraud.
I am simply a mom who drives a 12-passenger van because that’s the only way I can get all my little ducks from point A to point B in one trip, one vehicle, without breaking any laws.
For several months after the birth of our seventh baby, we took two cars whenever we went places as a family. We took two cars to church, two cars to the zoo, two cars to the museum. We took two cars to the dealership where we bought the van. It was ridiculous to coordinate travel. It was foolish to use all that extra gas when one car could have stayed at home if only we had the room.
Now, I drive a behemouth, the biggest car on the street and in the grocery store parking lot. The kids spent our first few outtings asking if we were bigger than that car or that car or that bus? They’d ask, point, and I’d confirm with a yes, yes, and a no. Buses beat us, but not by much. We christened it The Brick, and sometimes I feel like maybe I should wear a jaunty cap and join a union because I am privileged enough to captain such a ship.
I realize some people are miffed by our vehicle. Some may even be horrified that in this day and age, I’d drive such a gas-guzzling beast. It’s okay to have that opinion. When Toyota comes out with a 9-passenger hybrid, that will be a happy and unusual day and I will be the first at the dealership clutching a brochure and sipping bad coffee as I listen to a salesperson’s spiel. It better have cupholders in the back, a hand sanitizer dispenser, and maybe a periscope so the kids in the back row can see what is ahead.
Driving The Brick won’t last forever. The kids will grow and move away. Right now, we are in a season when we have children who must be driven places and that is best done under one big dome light.
I think you can see it from outer space.
Gretchen, this post is awesome! How funny! Do you need a special license to drive that thing? Do you need to stop at railroad crossings and open your door to check for trains before crossing?
Just kidding. I think it’s great that you can all ride together now!
People crack me up. One of these days, I’m going to come up with a great comeback that basically tells them in a really funny way to MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!
Was that an eclipse yesterday?
Or just the passing of The Brick between me and the sun?
We used to joke that Suburbans must have an intercom system, because how else could you converse with people in the way back? Having said that, Gretchen, with 7 kids you probably spend your life in the car, so you can have whatever vehicle you want as far as I’m concerned. I hope people don’t take advantage of you with those extra seats and ask you for carpool rides!
Gretchen. #1.. JEALOUS that you have more kids than me. Now.. count the step son.. I’m tied with you!!!
That being said.. my mini-van only seats 7…. I need what you have!!
Awesome! I like what you said at the end about this season of your life. I was once discussing with a woman at my church that I felt bad that I couldn’t participate in certain church activities because of the kids’ schedules and my work schedule.
She also has young children and told me that the way she saw it, this was a season in her life when more of her energy needed to be spent with her children, while others in the church were in a season of their lives that enabled them to give more of their time to certain church-related activities. And when her life reached the season when her kids were grown and had moved out of the house, she would, in turn, have the time to devote to other pursuits.
I love this perspective and try to remind myself of it often, because I have a tendency to want to take on everything at once.
Congrats on The Brick. I hope it brings you many years of safe travels. Just think, in a few short years, your eldest may be learning to drive that thing!
You’re so right about how it’s something you are driving now, not forever. Heck, maybe just drive it into the ground and by then, someone will be in college? Or at least driving their own broken-down 1975 Datsun?
I’ll join you in driving one of “those” vehicles.
Mine happens to look like the CIA or Mafia has arrived though. You drive the brick and I drive “Big Frankie”. Hehe.
It’s a beautiful Brick. Hey, calculate people per gallon per mile and you are saving the earth. It’s mass transit but it just happens to be all one family.
Oh Lucky you!!! We have #8 due in a couple of weeks and my biggest stress is we will now have to take two cars everywhere… I have a nine seater but we will need ten seat belts… so effectively stuck at home unless on weekends when the father person will be home to shift the “fall-out”… I have to laugh at how many people ask to ride with us since we have such a big car as it is and we have to say – “Sorry, we are full up” and they look at us aghast and then the rows of car seats – Aha! We really are full up!