Astrovan Odes
Childhood in the Rearview Mirror
Article by Mattie Valinsky, art by Ra Omar
Astrovan chugging along the freeway. I bet to sleepless eyes, the ones who neighbored our ungraceful force on wheels, the grumpy looking eight-something-year-old attempting to fold her chunky little cheeks under the bottom-opening windows, you know the ones that could crack a mere inch, was a truly unruly sight. Don’t worry, I’d say, you are surely not my target. Not even an interesting enough license plate to garner my attention at a time when I have floor crumbs to count on for entertainment.
Faced window to window with the truck beside us, I performed my duty as entertainer in the backseat. With a reflexive yank of an invisible chain that hangs in the space above my knuckles, fist clenched, and elbow bent, I brought the hammer down. An eruption of giggles cascaded through the wind as the blast of the truck driver's horn ricocheted off my eardrums. Instant gratification.
A tip of the hat, a huff, a puff, a smile, or a nod patted my back and told me they were proud. That I was a champ, a soldier of the roads, maybe even someone’s pal for a moment. Now, I can’t say I know enough of the logistics of the act to share the secret to my 100-percent success rate. You would have to ask my brother. The originator. Him, the teacher, and me, the student.
However, I imagine the chain finds me like Percy Jackson’s satchel in the movies, guiding me to fulfillment. Always present, but not really there. If you ask my parents, they’d say the motion was rather indelicate or unladylike, but this was all to hide the softness in their eyes. A point of recognition. A reminder of childhood abandon, perhaps.
Let me introduce you to The Green Machine: a nineteen-eighty-something-year-old Astrovan whose name was bestowed upon it by my middle school best friend on the blacktop of the school pick-up line. Alexandra Dorsey. Alex. Ms. Dorsal Fin.
The nickname for the van caught on as an ode to the girl who was my first genuine human friend.
The green machine. The green van. The tank. The big old rolling turd. Whose velvet-like and vaguely gray seats mimicked the feeling of your grandfather’s favorite weathered-down brown recliner. The type of seats who were intelligent, whose muscle memory greeted your body by remembering every groove of your legs or hitch of your hips. Admittedly, both seats were probably sold in the sale section of a Sears parking lot in Upstate NY as unlikely pals to old souls alike. I bet your grandfather named his chair too. Probably. Maybe Sally, or something that emotes good ole boy energy.
Those seats were my wiener dog’s favorite. Charlie. Charles. Wiener dog. My mom always said that if she ever got rid of the van, which she swore she never would, she would keep those seats as a parting gift to my dog. I wonder what those seats have become.
Found friends. Taken for scraps long before I could stake my claim in the driver’s seat. Did you know my dad had a matching brown Astrovan? Ronald’s brown machine doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. Alas, it was crushed long before any formative memories were made in its presence. No quirky locks that clicked and clacked without command. No sounds that were ultimately blamed on my brother Jack’s leg pressing buttons they had no business pressing. No yelling matches that were born of locking and unlocking despite the locks singing every time Greenie was driven. No sounds were made at all.
I miss her. I miss her whenever I release the top-opening windows on our new, but not new, space-gray Honda. I miss her anytime the irritating whistle born from the poor aerodynamics loses its match with the force that is the wind. I miss her anytime I must calculate the allowance of wind based on our speed. I miss her anytime I am asked from the backseat if my window is open. I miss her anytime I’m scolded, “you know a window on each side must be open!” I miss her anytime I hear that sound. The sound that is only comparable to a baby rooster’s feathers being ruffled for the very first time. I miss her anytime I do that window-opening-and-closing-dance until the stupid rooster stops screaming. I miss her anytime the electric doors become stuck.
Not to say Greenie’s never did. But I mourn the biceps I would have every time I opened the door a little too far. I mourn the reflexive motion of picking the door up, sliding it back into the frame, and giving it a little kick to encourage closing. I mourn the name “MAX'' carved into its metal frame, which my mom claims my brother proudly etched. I mourn the loud latches. Everything was latched, secured and safe.
I certainly will never miss or mourn the gray thing that lacks character. You know, the kind of character your mom claimed as positive every time the green van broke. It was always “character” and never “broken.”
The original and only driver of the Astrovan, in my eyes, is my mom. Pam. Pammy. Pamela. The five-foot-something lady whose voice I mock anytime I recount her yelling at me from the front seat. Yelling at me to throw her the collection of sweaters, the ones that lived on the seat next to me. The sweaters whose main purpose was not to save people from the cold, but rather, act as a cushion for her to be able to “see better.” A glorified booster seat, essentially.
Now, anytime an Astrovan-esque vehicle passes my friends and I, all college females, on the street, we laugh. We point. We exclaim that if we were ever kidnapped that would be the van to do so. You know, the type where the doors slide open for prime snatching, or the back door houses a man that just needs a little help with the load he’s carrying. We illustrate the driver to be someone who fits the archetype of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. You know, one of our favorite movies that we watched together on the floors of dorm rooms. We joke that I would be the least likely to be kidnapped of all three. That I, unlike them, am at least over five feet tall. We find humor in this.
We spoke of danger, which somehow cleansed our bodies with a cool air of creepiness because the image produced was not far off from the lingering reality of womanhood. We now pay close attention to the shadows of figures in doorways. We now subconsciously calculate the changing tempo of footsteps in our rear view. We now stroll aimlessly about with the subtlety of a woman’s watchful gaze. We are now left heavier because somewhere down the road we lost our childhood abandon.
No longer latched, no longer secured, and certainly no longer safe.