In the Family Way

The other day, Sam suggested that we think about getting a minivan.

Now, I feel like I've cheerfully adapted to a number of life changes in the past year: the much-bemoaned yielding of my sovereignty for marriage, giving up my own house for a shared (if incredibly beautiful) space, closing a couple of my own credit cards, accepting the indignities and dependencies of pregnancy, and facing down the psychological crises of impending parenthood. But even with all of that, I'm absolutely certain that I am not ready to own a minivan.

I'm not a person who is terribly attached to her car, nor am I someone who understands cars well enough to know what various makes and models symbolize about the person who owns them. But come on, a minivan? Even for a car-illiterate person, it's a sign of something, a sign that something has happened to you that you cannot ever undo, no matter how many red convertibles you buy around your fiftieth birthday.

So we've been looking at other options. We'd originally intended to get a Prius when we replaced my car, but then I bought the stroller we'd picked out and we saw how it practically bulged out of my current car. I was sad to see that the PT Cruiser and VW Passat (station wagon = acceptable) are not very well ranked on Consumer Reports. We both like Subaru station wagons a lot, but they're all 4-wheel drive, and one of the reasons we're interested in getting a new car is to have a vehicle with better gas mileage than Sam's truck and more comfort/convenience/space than my current car. Apparently, the Toyota Rav4, though it's categorized as an SUV, is built on a Camry frame, so it's comparable to a car in its gas consumption.

Ah, life . . .