An Era Ends
My baby turned 10. My first baby – the very first tiny human that made me a mama for real is a whole decade old. This birthday was a much more earthshaking event than any “milestone” birthday I've ever celebrated for myself.
When that baby was born, we were living in a second-floor condo with two dogs that needed to be walked on a leash several times a day and we only had one car with a back seat. Our other car was a pickup truck with sideways-facing jump seats – not really something you can strap a baby into. So we sold it and traded up to Big Bertha.
Big Bertha was a behemoth of a truck – V8 with a crew cab that could comfortably seat five adult men and a full-length bed. The baby fit just fine in the backseat, and we could still use Bertha to have adventures camping, hauling mountain bikes, and four-wheeling through ice to snowboard. Bertha was wonderful, but really, really big.
A year ago, the cost of driving and maintaining Bertha motivated us to buy a small commuter car for Dad-e-Lion to drive to work. Quokka was out of booster seats and we could suddenly fit three kids across the backseat of a smaller vehicle.
This autumn, Athena will be coming out of the booster seats as well and our transportation priorities will be shifting with our family.
So, today, we sold Bertha.
We sold her to someone who just started his family and needs a solid, reliable truck that will hold him, and his wife, their baby and their dogs. Instead of sitting alone every day in front of our house, she’ll be trucking around Northern California, having adventures with a new family.
I’m normally a very pragmatic person, but this is making me cry.
10 years ago this month, we added Big Bertha to our family so that we could haul our pups and our precious one-month-old Quokka around, safe and sound. This is the end of an era, a decade has passed and so much is different, in some ways I hardly recognize us – that budding family trying to figure out all of this new, scary stuff.
We've changed, and grown, and it’s time to move on with new plans, new perspectives and new adventures.
Good bye Big Bertha, happy trails, keep them safe.
When that baby was born, we were living in a second-floor condo with two dogs that needed to be walked on a leash several times a day and we only had one car with a back seat. Our other car was a pickup truck with sideways-facing jump seats – not really something you can strap a baby into. So we sold it and traded up to Big Bertha.
Big Bertha was a behemoth of a truck – V8 with a crew cab that could comfortably seat five adult men and a full-length bed. The baby fit just fine in the backseat, and we could still use Bertha to have adventures camping, hauling mountain bikes, and four-wheeling through ice to snowboard. Bertha was wonderful, but really, really big.
A year ago, the cost of driving and maintaining Bertha motivated us to buy a small commuter car for Dad-e-Lion to drive to work. Quokka was out of booster seats and we could suddenly fit three kids across the backseat of a smaller vehicle.
This autumn, Athena will be coming out of the booster seats as well and our transportation priorities will be shifting with our family.
So, today, we sold Bertha.
We sold her to someone who just started his family and needs a solid, reliable truck that will hold him, and his wife, their baby and their dogs. Instead of sitting alone every day in front of our house, she’ll be trucking around Northern California, having adventures with a new family.
I’m normally a very pragmatic person, but this is making me cry.
10 years ago this month, we added Big Bertha to our family so that we could haul our pups and our precious one-month-old Quokka around, safe and sound. This is the end of an era, a decade has passed and so much is different, in some ways I hardly recognize us – that budding family trying to figure out all of this new, scary stuff.We've changed, and grown, and it’s time to move on with new plans, new perspectives and new adventures.
Good bye Big Bertha, happy trails, keep them safe.
