Joyful Noise

It's fall break (no school Thursday-Monday), and I'm sitting across the table from Zoe while she plays Roblox on Nicky's laptop and sings loudly about America. One thing about Zoe - she makes noise with every emotion. If she's happy, she's loud. If she's sad, she's loud.

I can deal with the loud right now because she's happy. She has had quite the emotional few days. 

Zoe has a strange attachment to our household items. A few years ago we got a new couch in our living room, and Zoe went ballistic over us getting rid of our old one. She laid on the cushions and cried for hours, begging us to keep it. She kept saying, "But it's a part of our family!" I thought this was a one-time, attention-seeking episode, but then she did the same thing when we got a new dishwasher. All of a sudden, our old, piece of crap dishwasher had a name and was the most important thing our family had ever owned. I had to hold her back while Scotty dragged the old dishwasher out of the house. 

Well, the time has come for us to buy a new vehicle. Our van is on the fritz and has been for a while. Our truck is also on the fritz, but one thing at a time. We did a few thousand dollars of repairs on the van a few years ago in hopes that we could get it to last another 2-3 years, and luckily, it did. But now we either need to throw a few thousand dollars more into it or replace it, and after thinking about it and looking at a few options, we are going to buy a new (to us) one. 

We bought our current van in 2016. It has lived a good life. It has taken us to California nine times, Saint George five times, and various other destinations like Phoenix, New Mexico, Idaho, and a slew of National and State Parks. It's had a good run, and we've beat the crap out of it. The DVD player is broken, the seams of the seats have come apart and it's shedding bits of foam all over the interior, pieces have fallen off the inside and the outside, the carpet is worn down to the netting, and - let's be honest - it's absolutely disgusting after everything my kids have put it through. It has melted candy in the cup holders, crayon vandalism that no one will own up to, permanent sand in every crevice, and it smells pretty bad, too (shortly after we bought the van, a gallon of milk leaked in the trunk, and we had to pull out the carpet multiple times trying to get it clean, and it's never been the same). 

None of that stuff really matters to me, though. As long as the van is drivable and the fast food window works, I'm happy to keep driving it. But it's been leaking oil off and on for a few years now (we've had some things fixed, but the mechanic said it would likely start leaking again over time, and he was right), it has a strange vibration when we accelerate, and it makes a popping sound in the axels whenever we turn or reverse or make any quick movements. We've done repairs here and there, but it's to the point where we've done all of the affordable fixes and the more expensive ones aren't guaranteed to resolve the issues. 

(Here is when I change tense because it took me so long to write this post that what was present tense when I started is now past tense, and I just have to throw this little aside in here for my own peace of mind).

We found the van we wanted to buy, and when Zoe heard that we were planning on getting a new one, she went nuts (we weren’t going to tell her, but we forgot to let my mom know, and she mentioned it to Zoe without knowing what was going to happen). We got in contact with the seller, and over a few days as we tried to work out a time to go test drive and purchase the van, Zoe was an emotional wreck.

The night she found out about the van, she cried (loudly) for a couple of hours. When we put her to bed, she wailed from her room until she fell asleep. The next morning, she started crying as soon as she woke up. Then she cried on the way to school and refused to get out of the van until I promised her that we wouldn’t get rid of it while she was at school. 

After school, she did this for a while:

This whole deal started Tuesday night and continued through Friday. The odds were good that we would be making the final purchase Friday evening. Knowing this, Zoe requested to have some time alone with “Muffin,” which is what she suddenly started referring to our van as, based on the Bluey character. 

Zoe went out into the garage, instructing us to not come out no matter what we heard. She took the Echo out there and played music by AJR (which she claims is “sad” music), and she wailed for a while (and occasionally checked to make sure the garage door wasn’t completely closed so we could hear her). She told us she was doing a “goodbye ritual.” She also made me provide her with a lantern. 

It was intense.

We did end up getting the new van that night, and as we left the dealership - having traded in “Muffin” - we had to pry Zoe off.

None of the child development, parenting, or psychology classes I took for my degree prepared me for whatever this is.

As we left the dealership, pulling Zoe away from the old van, we tried the Marie Kondo approach and told Zoe to thank the van for serving its purpose and release it. 

As we drove home in the new van, she started feeling better and turned her energy toward fighting with Eva. There was a lot less crying but a lot more yelling. It made the new van instantly feel like “ours.” Ah, the sound of sibling rivalry echoing from the walls of a vehicle driving 65 down Mountain View.

So I’m okay with Zoe’s current noises of happiness because it sure beats the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth she’s been dishing out for the past several day.