Dimon Kendrick-Holmes
Go ahead and congratulate me.
For the first time this century, I don't own a minivan.
As late as 1999, I'd vowed never to own one. Bess was pregnant with our third child, and she somehow agreed to keep driving the Volkswagen Golf we'd bought when I was stationed in Germany.
This meant that when the baby arrived, we'd have to fit three children under the age of 4 - and their age-appropriate car seats - on the back row of a subcompact automobile.
To solidify this sketchy decision, I took the VW to the mechanic and told him to get it in tip-top shape, and as evidenced by the repair bill, he did exactly that, and added some extra Fahrvergnugen too.
A week later, Bess was driving with the two kids when a guy cutting through traffic smashed into them. They all had bumps and scrapes - our 3-year-old daughter had a bruise across her chest where the shoulder belt had tightened up to keep her safe - but everybody was fine.
Our car, though, was totaled and we needed another one.
The wreck got the attention of our parents, who each offered us a cash gift if we'd change our minds and step up to a bigger vehicle.
Something with three rows. And double sliding doors. And about 40 cup holders.
A minivan.
So here we are, 26 years later, moving into a new phase of life after owning two Honda Odysseys and guiding them down more than 500,000 miles of streets, highways and even some dirt roads.
Each of those vans was right in the middle of key moments in our family history.
The first minivan, the one with the cassette player, brought our son Will home from the hospital in 2000, and our son Joe home in 2002.
It carried all of us to visit my parents in the woods of Alabama and Bess' parents on their farm in Tennessee. It took us to the beach in the summer and places with snow in the winter.
In the spring and summer, on weekend nights when the Braves were playing in Atlanta, we'd grill a big supper - bratwurst or Boston butts or spare ribs - with our favorite sides and take everything in a cooler. We'd stand in line for $1 tickets and then take our food into the park and spread it out on one of the picnic tables on the left field terrace.
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We drove to New York City to see my brother's family at Christmas, heading downtown to see the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. My brother coached at a college in the Bronx and lived on campus, and he took us to the pool where my oldest son entered family lore by doing a belly buster off an Olympic high dive.
We drove to Houston to see Bess' sister's family and had two flat tires on the way, and on the way home a bunch of tires rolled off the back of a truck and one of them was headed toward for our van but bounced over the roof. We were spared, we like to say, from the bouncing tire of death.
Lots of Little League games and ballet recitals and camping trips and school events. Our daughter learning to drive.
That was the first van.
The second minivan, the one with a DVD player and an auxiliary jack, took us to band performances and football games and baseball games in middle school and high school. Our sons learning to drive.
The time a deputy pulled us over in Mississippi because one of our headlines was out. He asked if he could "lay hands" on our van and when we said yes he opened his palm and slapped the headlight, and the lamp inside suddenly burned bright, and he sent us on our way.
And then high school graduations, including that awkward drive-through commencement during COVID. And loading up for trips to dorm move-in day at the University of Georgia, and then football tailgate parties and then graduations in the massive stadium.
Then weddings.
And now, as I hand over the keys to that second, battered van - and receive in return a check for maybe 5% of what we paid for it - I can't help but think of our greatest road trip ever.
The Lake Michigan Circle Tour.
It started at Mars Cheese Castle in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and ended in Chicago, with excursions in between to a Milwaukee Brewers game, the world's largest outdoor water park, a dairy with freshly churned ice cream, a fish fry at a VFW lodge, a tour of Lambeau field, coastal highways of the Upper Peninsula, across Mackinac Bridge into Michigan, a ferry ride and then a bike ride around Mackinaw Island, the stupendous Sleeping Bear Dunes, a highly ranked disc golf course, an Avett Brothers concert, a White Sox game on Polish heritage night, The Bean, deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's, and that wasn't half of it.
It was everything we like to do together as a family.
We'll continue to do those things as our family grows, but we no longer fit into one minivan.
Bess broke the news to our kids this week in a group text.
They took it in stride.
"We'll just have to rent a 15 passenger bus so we can all ride together now," my oldest son texted.
Good times in the rearview mirror, and good times ahead.
Dimon Kendrick-Holmes is North Carolina editor for Lee Enterprises. Contact him at [email protected] or [email protected]
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