On being a one car family

We are a family of four with one car. Before I go further, I want to be clear: this is not a thing. This is not a slow cooking movement. This is not the capsule wardrobe gimmick. You will likely not find a One Car Family Ideas board on Pinterest.

This is also not a ponzi scheme or some other elitist scam for the 1%. This is written with full awareness that to own even ONE car is a privilege not enjoyed by a great majority of the world's population, nevermind an ability to fuel one's car on a regular basis plus the Nationwide Auto Transportation fees, etc.

This is, however, something of a lifestyle choice in an overprivileged overconsumptive sovereign nation and one I would choose over and over again. Do you like how I just cleared my throat for three straight paragraphs?

I've been asked by several people about being a one-car family, which appears to be something of a distinction in the carpool lanes in which I idle. I've thought quite a bit about this and what this says about me: that people would assume this would pose difficulty for us. Fair enough, I say. Because both adults in our family work outside the home in a geography where public transportation is not accessible/reliable for our purposes. Because we send our kids to a school that is not serviced by big yellow schoolbuses. Because we live in an age where 3-car garages are becoming standard in newly constructed homes.

So, I'll claim it as a thing--our thing. We are a one-car family. We have only ever been a one-car family. I brought no car to the relationship. My hubby inherited a green Honda CRV from his parents when we married, but she has since died (RIP Green Bus) and now we drive what I am told is the official car of the New England lesbian: a Subaru Outback. And we love her.

I'll also fully disclose that my hubby and I also own a mo-ped which he is crazy kind enough to drive much of the year to work and back.

There are many obvious perks to being a one-car fam. We pay less in auto insurance than if we owned, operated more vehicles. We only ever have to gas up one vehicle (the mo-ped uses less than $3/week in gas). When we lived in the city, I took the train everywhere, even when I had a double stroller for which I apologize to all who had to make room for me and my Hummer on the T. Now that we don't live near public trans, we work hard to economize our trips instead of just going out whenever we feel like it.

There are some less obvious perks, though, and these are the ones I value most. After speaking with another family who enjoys being a one-car fam, we agreed that there is a heightened communication system that is necessary with owning one car. Simply put: you have to share more. You have to share where you're going, what time you'll be home. I'm sure folks with multiple vehicles do this, but, in the case when my hubby drives the mo-ped to work, I have to stay mindful of the weather patterns. If it sleets, rains, or heaven forbid snows, I know we'll be packing up the kids in their jammies and schlepping downtown in the car to pick up Daddy. I love this about being a one-car family. We spend a lot of time catching up in the car. We work together as a family to keep it clean, inside and out.

Because of Loverpants' and my disparate schedules, we don't often share meals. Instead, we share the wide open road, sharing pieces of our day as we both gaze in the same direction, with our little backseat drivers chiming in and driving us absolutely nuts. And I would not have it any other way.

On siblings, neck strangles, and advantages

"That was nice, Baby Girl," I said after I saw her putting her brother into an affectionate neck strangle. "I gave [Little Man] a hug and told him he did a good job," she said.

It wasn't that she knew he did a good job; she spent the entirety of the T-ball game sifting through the nearby stream for minnows.

It wasn't that this was our routine after games: hugs and attaboys.

I think it was that she knew he needed it. Siblings can sense these unspoken needs in a way that is hard to qualify or quantify but which seems as true and clear as a car emerging from the car wash. Perhaps that is what siblings are: people who have come through the same wash cycle, people who've been scrubbed by the same soap, buffed by the same brushes, people who entered and exited from the same places. And sometimes they're not even biological.

My friend Haddy says she loves "to see siblings becoming." I think this is perfectly put. After just a week at home with my kids on summer vacation, I love to see them becoming so much more than the girl and boy who were knit together in the same pouch. Their identities as singular punks are evolving just as surely as the identity they share as a sibling set: they are whole people and they are part of a whole greater than themselves. They share a horizontal relationship that will be recognized with confirmations, like, "Ah, of course, you are his sister," and, at times, with incredulity "Oh! He's your brother?!"  that I'm sure will follow them well into their adulthood.

I am grateful to have witnessed their early moments of gelling and the inevitable moments where they beat the tar out of one another. I am overcome sometimes how two people who didn't get to choose one another for five years continue to choose one another: as playmates, as best frenemies.  I think about the disadvantages they have, living so many hundreds of miles removed from any family. How they don't know many of their grands and aunties and uncles and cousins in anything more than monochrome, in one dimension.

But then I think about the great, immeasurable advantage of just having a sibling with whom to suffer these really weird parents. Even if they have nothing in common, have disparate life goals, have no abiding interest in pursuing a meaningful relationship with one another--siblings have the goods on one another. They understand how each other came to be, far better than their parents could ever fathom. They will know the ticking of each other's hearts, not just the steady rhythmic beats but the wild, erratic hiccups and dips and the soul-thirst for a hug after a T-ball game, where upon a little brother, aka "Little Bother" asked the snack provider for an extra juicebox. "For my sister."

Lies about seashells

The seashells that make it into the collection, the ones that are worthy of gluing onto jewelry boxes and displaying in glass lamps are the whole ones. They are the bleachy white sand dollars, the shiny conch shells, the hardy raveneli. We search for the ones who have come through the storms at sea and remain in tact. But the lie we believe about seashells is the same lie we believe about ourselves. Because both people and shells who've not suffered a few dings, dents, cracks in their exterior are usually not very interesting. The ones who appear stage-ready with very little effort have secrets to tell. Rarely are they innately more impressive or distinctly beautiful. It's just they've been protected or had a distinct advantage on their journey here. The cracked ones, the ones who are missing a piece, the ones who are nicked with a few holes--these are the ones with epic tales.  These are the ones we stand back and wonder, how? How are they still able to drift over waves and dunes and land here, still shining as sunbeams glint off their jagged edges?

***

We spent the week on Tybee Island with my old man and stepmom and their two pugs. We introduced the old man to American Ninja Warrior. I think he's hooked. Or, in his words, "At least I know not to turn it off immediately when it's on." It's really something to watch the old man with the dings in his back and all the white hair we gave him relish these moments with a five and seven year-old, lifting them up over cresting waves and accepting their sandcake offerings as if all of this beach tomfoolery were brand new. As if he'd never known the wonder of the seaside with children before.

***

We took a trolley ride through Savannah one afternoon. Savannah with her mossy splendor ravishes me in ways that are more like a lusty romance than a fondness for a city. I think her combination of history and mystery make her unlike any other place I've been. The tour guide covered all the major players from Eli Whitney to Forrest Gump (ha!). She didn't spare us any unflattering anecdote about John Wesley or about slavery itself. History has a way of exposing the jagged edges of our shells that are undeniable. But as the tour wrapped up, we passed a housing development. The tour guide tried to direct our attention to the magnificent railyards across the street, but there was a nagging sense for anyone onboard that we were being diverted. The mansions and the fountains and the art districts well-preserved are all ruddy shells. Heaven forbid we talk about housing projects, though. We can't be looking at the difficult to explain, the less-than-ideal. Just like a clam shell that we cast back into the ocean, we look away from shells now occupied. We prefer to study the vacated, the accomplished shells, the cockles and raveneli who've weathered the storms and who came out unscathed.

The lie we believe about seashells--that the most beautiful ones are the ones who are unoccupied and unmarred--is the same lie we believe about ourselves. Ask any woman who has given birth if she felt at her most beautiful right after having a baby. She has just, with every fiber of her being, brought new life into the world. The magazine headlines will convince us that she can get her pre-baby body back in six weeks time, right on cue for bikini season. I say she will look awesome, sitting seaside under an umbrella with her baby, a mindless book, and a few cracked shells catching the sunlight.