My first car was a very old beat up Ford. I don’t even remember what kind. I just remember paying the seller $300 dollars and give instructions to keep the fluids filled. That should have been my first clue but I was desperate teenager at the time.

The moment I turned sixteen, I got my driver’s license and my first real paying job. I hadn’t hesitated. I guess I was what some would call, independent. My boyfriend was older and had a car. My friends all had cars and I bummed a ride to school everyday from a boy who liked me. His car was hot! If I was honest with myself, so was the driver. Somehow, I overlooked him and fell in love with the car, a gold Chevy Nova.

My step-dad loved working on old cars. We had several, one was an older El Camino SS. We never could get that car to run. Just like my first car, it also ended up in the scrap yard. As handy as I was, I lacked the motivation and focus.

My next vehicle was two-wheel drive Toyota truck, a hand me down. It got me to school and work. It was practical. What it wasn’t, was a monster truck, a dirty mudding truck, a catch air in an apartment complex truck… you get the idea. The truck didn’t match my personality but isn’t that usually the case at that age?

When I got married, we shared a practical yet sporty Honda Accord. Not the new one today, so popular with families. No, this was when they were party cars, street racers, and wannabe adult cars.

As we got older and moved around, we used an old Dodge minivan to cross the country, where it promptly died. It was replaced with a Jeep Liberty but when we settled for a time in the countryside, we ended up with a plethora of four wheel drive trucks.

This is where the story takes a turn. We had kids.

Yes, somehow, adding tiny human beings changes the way we drive, the way we live, the choices we make on the outside, even if our hearts are still longing for the double cab truck of our dreams.

Our ambitions took us from a place where we could envision our retirement into the ‘burbs where trucks aren’t practical or econimically efficient for a young family.

This is where the minivan came back, with a vengeance.

I recall telling my husband to “just pick a vehicle that we can all fit into,” referring to our small family and my sister who had a daughter at the time.

He came back with our first white minivan.

It was a pivitol moment in our lives. We had left behind a life we adored for ambitions that took our lives into an uncomfortable turn. We questioned our sanity and praised our practically selves. We cursed the suburbs while praising our choices, as parents. We loathed our white minivan while gushing at the convenience it held for our family.

When we lived in the country I had been a part of a mom’s group where the coordinator drove a brand new Toyota minivan. It had all the bells and whistles. They lived in a huge country farm house on a huge plot of land. They seemed to be doing quite well for themselves.

Maybe it was their example that drew me to the possibilities of driving a minivan. Somehow, the status of the car they drove was a reflection of their prosperity. Perhaps that is why I embraced the white minivan.

The color wasn’t a conscientious choice. It was just what was a available at the time.

We dive a newer white minivan today, again, not because we like white, we just cared more about the convenience than the color.

I don’t know that I would have made different choices back then but there is something to be said about non-descript white, a practical vehicle, and the convenience.

I wish I could say our lives were reflected in our choice of vehicles but the truth is far from practical or convenient.

My husband and I have now been together for 25 years, we have three boys who play competitive soccer, we have a horse and will likely get a dog in the same way we picked the white minivan.

It’s not that we don’t care or that we aren’t aware of the choices that reflect our lives. The truth is complicated. You know the saying, “don’t judge a book by it’s cover?” Well, that applies to families too.

We are just your average family with three boys, no picket fence, renters in the suburbs, soccer loving, animal loving, wishing we were fishing instead of being on conference calls, walking the neighborhood instead of sleeping in, drinking at home to save money to replace another pair of shoes our boys have outgrown, dreaming of being back in the country, fantasizing about all night karaoke bars, wishing we had a regular babysitter, hoping to someday replace the white minivan with literally any color sports car, saving up for an eco-friendly truck, biding our time until our kids go to college, flawed, scarred, and totally out of our depth kind of family.

These are the stories behind the stories. It’s a lifestyle but it’s not always a choice.

ME.