i am very happy with my life.

if it were possible to choose again,

i would choose exactly what i have now.

but,

today i bought

(why is this so hard to say?)

a dark aquamarine mini-van.

it is so necessary.

as we wait for our son,

it is clear that physically it would be

impossible to squeeze one more carseat

into our little red four-door,

but a mini-van?

sigh.

so, now i am hunting for something.

a thing that screams “duck!” as the label of ‘mini-van owner’ careens toward me

a thing that will holler ‘it’s still me in here’,

a thing that will make it feel less like an ugly school uniform one is required to wear

and more like an added perk of my current lifestyle.

this ‘thing’ so far is elusive.

not only do i not know where it is,

i’ve no clue where to begin to look for it.

i had a flash of an idea this afternoon:

i could ‘tag’ the car as part of me

by knitting up a brightly striped antennae cover,

a piece of knit graffiti formed from the scraps of projects that i’ve made and loved.

then i remembered that my new chariot has no antennae…

don’t get me wrong.

i am so grateful for a vehicle

big enough to carry my whole growing family

as we make new memories and form new traditions together.

it just seems a bit surreal to be the owner of such a caravan.

i have detested them on so many levels for so long.

this feels like giving in to maturity

in a way that makes me

kick and scream

inside,

like the spoiled child i am trying so hard to teach my children not to be.

why is it that it is so easy to see my worst traits reflected in them

and so few and far between that i see pieces of me there that shine?

still the mini-van does not make the woman, at least not this woman.

you simply cannot know a book completely by it’s covering.

perhaps that is their lesson for today.

and perhaps it is mine, too.

‘remembered’ taken from 78:39 in the psalms.