Ode to Minivan

I recently discovered that a fellow mommy is also a great poet. Now anyone who knows me well knows my aversion to poetry, unless it is of the Shakespeare or Wordsworth variety, but this particular poem is awesome. Cheryl, or as I know her, "Andrew's mommy", is a very funny girl.

Enjoy!

The most awesome moments in life
answer questions
you would never think to ask.
So when you buy a minivan
make sure to get a sunroof
for the giraffes.
Your minivan will be
juice-cracker-candy-glue-glitter-burger-booger encrusted,
and will have a bad smell you cannot find.
And you will not like the bad smell
and you will remember wearing
clean clothes and self esteem.
Life can be so humbling
that you forget how to dream.

But then we were visiting friends
in North Carolina for Christmas
and they said,
“We have to go to Lazy Five Ranch.
It’s the Redneck Safari.”
So the two dads were in the front
who used to ski with beers in their jackets
and the two moms were in the back
with their unused doctorates.
And rattling around
the middle of the minivan
where we pulled out the seats
were our combined five boys
ages 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6
all holding big buckets
of Wild Animal Chow
for a three mile tour
through seven hundred wild
(presumably herbivore) animals
mobbing our minivan
to put their heads through our windows
and eat chow
from our beautiful babies’ buckets of it.

A flock of emu
six feet tall and ostrichey
eyes crazy wide and blue
jet pistoned triangular beaks down
centimeters from my baby’s face
to spray chow to the ceiling
of the minivan.
The boys were all screaming
like they’d been mass electrocuted
with excitement.

There were gazelles,
dark hairy potbellied pigs
a lot of things I couldn’t name
and zebras.
A buffalo’s gruesomely enormous head
entered the front passenger window
to run its thick grey tongue
along the inside towards the handle.
It was a little scary.
I’m not even a dog person.
The kids were live squealing pinballs
ricocheting and roaring
as we drove slowly along.
The dads laughing and smiling
like good dogs out on a run.
The moms
two cans of anxiety soup
with “stress is good food” on the labels -

and then, there we were
paused at the top of a clearing
offering our buckets out the sunroof
to the gold and brown
puzzle piece face
of a giraffe.
A giraffe!
All long lashes and fuzzy horns
and a really fierce and smelly drool
that dripped down to the gear shift.
A giraffe,
a real giraffe
right in the minivan’s sunroof.

Until that moment
I never knew
how much I wanted that to happen.
Those five little kids shrieking
and caroming around a sticky minivan
spraying animal chow
like unfortunate manna.
Dodging giraffe drool
in North Carolina .
Just when you think
nothing new will ever happen again.
The most awesome things in life
are the ones you couldn’t plan.