Soon after I moved to Naperville, a friend sent me a cartoon depiction of the Naperville Mom. Blonde and perky, dressed in stylish sweats, she stood in front of a baby blue minivan. Now that I’m an insider, I know a Naperville mom is as likely to wear a sari or hijab as she is a Juicy Couture track suit. But the minivan? The cartoon nailed that one.
I resisted the lure of the minivan for nearly a year after we moved west. I was perfectly content to tool around town in my Rav 4. My kids? Not so much. Though two children can easily fit in the back of a Rav 4, they can also touch each other. I would rather drive while trying to wrestle an octopus than drive in a car that puts my children in poking and prodding range of each other.
So, we got a minivan. The kids loved it; they each had their own captain’s chair. My husband loved it; it had a smooth ride and a powerful engine. Me? I was just glad my kids couldn’t touch each other. So, it was a minivan, the uncoolest of cars. “You’re a Naperville mom,” I told myself, “you’re not supposed to be cool. You’re supposed to drive a minivan.”
I insisted we buy a red one, reasoning I’d be able to find it in the sea of silver minivans at Target. Apparently, that year every mother in Naperville had the same idea. I regularly pointed my beeping key at the wrong car, searching for my own. My son rolled his eyes. He’d let me beep as many as three cars before telling me I was lame and the car was parked an aisle over.
The kids loved riding in their individual upholstered lounge chairs but I hated that car. It rode so low to the ground that the front bumper kissed more curbs than a Skid Row bum. I scraped bottom in so many parking lots that I now know the flattest way to enter and exit all of my favorite shopping locales.
But while it rode too low, it was also too high. More than once, I whacked the rear spoiler pulling out of the garage a fraction too fast for our ancient, and unreliable, door opener.
I drove the minivan for two years and there wasn’t a day that I didn’t say, “I hate this car.” When I discovered my son was big enough to ride in the front seat, we went straight to the Toyota dealer. The salesman and I shot the breeze while we waited for my new car. “I bet you get a lot of moms trading this car in,” I said. “No, m’am, we really don’t. You’re the first,” he responded. But I didn’t care. I got in my new red Rav 4 and drove to the steepest parking lot exit I could find.