vehicle induced identity crisis

The day finally came. My tenuous and distant grasp on anything associated with my carefree youth has finally slipped away from me. I drive a minivan. How those words have crushed my soul with their enormous weight. I knew this day would come. The moment the phrase "Hey, lets have kids" passed between Charlie and myself, the minivan of doom has hung with its soul crushing mass over my head. Like the proverbial cartoon piano hanging precariously from a fraying rope out a window waiting for me to pass by, it has been there. Hounding me relentlessly from the edges of my subconscious. And now it is here. Parked in my garage. Mocking me and my self image as a carefree, relatively cool person. I stare at it as I go to lock the doors at night, and for just a moment we stare each other down. It always wins. I'm a middle aged mom who drives a minivan, there's no denying it anymore.

I will write more and make it amusing later, some day...when it doesn't hurt. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal. I learned to drive in a minivan. My mom's minivan was the only vehicle available to me until I had bought my own car. Why is this so hard for me to accept? I'm not even a car person. It shouldn't bother me. I should accept it as just another marker of the passage of time in my life. Like the first time I bought eye cream, or waited patiently for food storage items to go on sale. It's the way life goes, and I will accept it. I can still be me as I drive down the road in my shiny, silver dodge caravan. Just give me time. And perhaps a drink.