So, that happened.

My first car was a Mustang. It was a 1980 powder blue hatchback with far too many cylinders for a 16 year old girl, as evidenced by the rainy day when I delicately parked it in the ditch after fishtailing on slick asphalt because when you gunned it in that thing, it really moved.

I loved my first car.  I wanted a Mustang. I got a Mustang. I ruined a Mustang.

I moved on to other cars after that - a Geo Metro with half the engine my Mustang had, a Mazda 626 that couldn't keep a transmission, and a Nissan Sentra, shiny and red, with some weird overdrive issue.  Then there was the Altima and the Eclipse - the cars we vowed to drive into the ground.  The sedans we've been holding onto as if they were our last shred of dignity.  Because they are our last connection to that pre-child life where our cars were pretty and sleek, where they didn't stink of chinese food and feet, where we could comfortably reach into the back floorboards without wondering what fresh hell we might find, or at least know if we found it that *we* put it there.

But now we've snipped that final small thread between musician and performance poet us and middle-aged suburban parent us.  We bought this behemoth.  We tell ourselves we're still cool and we call it War Machine because "Predawn grey mica" is exactly the same color as Iron Man's partner.

And exactly as every other minivan sellout has told me I would, I love it.

It's big.  The kids are no longer playing the game I call "elbows and eyeballs".  I don't have to listen to one person tell me they're getting kicked into the face.  When belted in, they are all contained in a space much farther away from me and from each other than they used to have and every bit of it was worth it. Did I mention it's big?

And it's fancy.  My last car was 15 years old, which means that the features and benefits consisted of a CD player and a trunk that pops open from the inside.  This one has special keys and satellite navigation and weather and special radio stuff and things.  And approximately 27 cupholders.  And a seat warmer.

If I think too much about the bill, I get a little fluttery in my "I work for peanuts" soul, but man, this thing is beautiful. Just once I'd like to go back in time and talk to performing poet me.  "Performance poet me," I'd say.  "Twelve years from now you will have three children and a minivan and Martha Stewart will have served time in prison.  Suck it up and deal."

I'd never believe me.