“Just buy a Toyota,” my wife urged.
We needed to trade in our troublesome Mercury Sable wagon, but we still needed room for three kids. My wife had a point: her little Corolla coupe had gone 175,000 trouble-free miles and showed no signs of stopping. Still wishing to avoid a minivan, I held out hope of finding a used Camry wagon. But the last of those rolled out of the factory six years prior, and those I found had high mileage. A Sienna it would be, then.
I test-drove a new base model. It met our needs, but wow was it dull, with numb steering and soft handling. Then I spied a used top-trim XLE across the lot. It had lots of goodies — power windows and locks, cruise, leather, sunroof, captain’s chairs, alloy wheels, dual sliding doors, and a premium sound system. Reasonable miles, same price as the new base model. Sold! The luxuries helped take the sting out.
Our younger sons’ car seats went into the second-row captain’s chairs. Our oldest was thrilled to have the third row to himself. There was still room in the wayback for all the baby and toddler gear. I grudgingly admitted this was superior to the station wagon.
But I drove the Sienna alone 90 percent of the time. And the XLE was just as dull to drive as the base model. After a while, the luxury features that led me to buy this van weren’t enough to overcome my growing dislike of it. I told myself I just needed to grind through four years with it, at which time our oldest would graduate high school and head off into his own life.
Grind through I did, but not just with the Sienna. Increasingly, I was grinding through my marriage, too. We both were.
I hadn’t worked through my relationship with my father. I had learned to accommodate, to not push back, as it was safer to do that than to face Dad’s wrath. I entered adulthood with no idea how to set personal boundaries, or what good boundaries even looked like. I carried these behaviors into my marriage, and it was part of what made the relationship not work. It’s hard to know for sure, but I think perhaps somewhere along the way she stopped respecting me for lacking a backbone. We both became disillusioned and angry.
As things deteriorated at home and stress piled on, I stopped taking care of the Sienna. I’d always been meticulous about car maintenance, but now I couldn’t manage it. Oil changes happened, but always months late. Something threw the alignment out and I drove it like that for a year, ruining the front tires. After finally fixing the alignment I drove on those bad tires for months more, leading to squirrelly handling. I like a tidy car but I couldn’t manage to keep trash picked up. I stopped washing it.
I was barely taking care of myself either. This was the best I could do.
After a spectacularly rough period, we agreed we needed a break from each other. I took a week off work, rented a cabin in a Tennessee state park, and headed out in the neglected Sienna.
I was in no hurry, so I drove back highways. I came upon Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home, the home of Sergeant York, a Kaiser-Frazer museum, and a boneyard of early postwar cars — all unexpected delights. (I wrote about this trip for CC here.)
Hanging out in the cabin was peaceful. I slept a lot, and made my meals there. When I was awake I hiked and swam.
I didn’t realize how much stress I was under until I wasn’t under it anymore.
I think this was the first clue I had of how bad things had become. When my week was over, I didn’t want to go home. Yet I did, because the alternative was divorce, and I couldn’t bear the thought of not living with my children every day.
I took another long solo road trip in the Sienna. My wife had a sister in Huntsville, Alabama. She wanted to visit and fly there. I wanted to drive. The trip took about the same amount of time either way, I reasoned, and driving cost a lot less. But she wouldn’t have it. We compromised, sort of. I dropped her and the boys off at the Indianapolis airport, made a delightful, peaceful drive to the Huntsville airport, and picked them up there.
The Sienna just kept running. Despite my neglect, it started every time and got me where I needed to go. That’s what Toyotas do.
Things just got worse. We hung on until 2004, when she told me she needed us to separate. I moved out. She soon filed for divorce, and it was an ugly one. The last couple years of our marriage and the two years our divorce dragged on were the hardest of my life.
There were times driving around in the Sienna that I fantasized about driving it off a bridge, or hard into a wall.
But I was determined to stay in my kids’ lives, so I hung on.
The Sienna survived my neglect because it was a Toyota, built to endure. I survived too. Maybe I’m as sturdy as a Toyota.
Next I’ll write about another Toyota, one our oldest bought to be his first car, but which I ended up driving.
Sounds like it was the perfect vehicle to get you through some tough times. I respect your honesty and self-reflection; it must be hard to write about this period in your life.
You know, it wasn’t so hard to bring these difficult times up. They happened 20 years ago and I’ve sorted myself after them. What was hard was choosing what _not_ to tell. We both did things that destroyed the marriage. It might have been cathartic to air all of the dirty laundry, but half of those stories are my ex-wife’s to tell, and not mine. Also, this is a memoir primarily about the cars. My life is important in it, but is more the backdrop.
Jim, writing these automotive related experiences from our lives aren’t easy, particularly when peeling back a layer or two as you have…I admire your candor and self-awareness.
Having a durable automotive partner in one’s life, particularly during those turbulent times, is priceless.
I’ve done a great deal of work to make sense of what happened in my first marriage, and to change my beliefs and behaviors so I can be healthier and happier.
Honestly, if the Sienna hadn’t been so damned reliable it would have been challenging for me to deal with during that time and might have undone me.
Hard times. You’re obviously right about setting relationship boundaries, especially with a difficult father, and the potential for that to spill into other relationships and a marriage. Marriages made when young are risky because there’s still a lot to figure out and learn, mostly about ourselves. We married young, and it wasn’t exactly always easy, but we got through a crisis and came out the other side stronger.
As to my father, leaving home at 18 and moving far away solved that issue completely. He instantly had no more power over me, and he knew it. My older sister had done that at 18, and my older brother did it at 22, but my younger brother never broke away and his (and his wife’s) life ended up being very entangled in my parents’ life.
I wish we had bought a Toyota Previa in 1992 instead of the Grand Caravan.
I wish the crises my first wife and I endured had done more to sharpen us and bind us together, rather than drive us apart. I think difficulties, whether within the marriage or externally affecting the marriage, are the crucible in which the deepest bonds can be built — or the dynamite that blows everything apart.
I had four years of college between 18 and full independence, sort of a halfway house. After I graduated and got a job, I lived my life in ways deliberately aimed at never having to move back in with my parents.
The thing was, it wasn’t that my childhood home was unloving. I was just well past wanting to be controlled and judged by my father.
There came a point during the years in Terre Haute where my parents came to visit. I put them up, fed them, etc., until they left after a couple of days. As they were leaving, Dad said, “You’re really living your life. You keep on keeping on.” I knew it then, this was him releasing me. It was an important moment in our relationship. He still couldn’t have an adult-adult relationship but at least he stopped trying to control me from afar.
A good vehicle for the time, you have indeed turned out to be Toyota-like to this day in terms of your sturdiness and reliability.
Glad you got through that time.
Just. So. Boring. But yes, in many ways just the car I needed to get me through.
I love minivans. my dad was always a taurus wagon guy and I wanted him to get a minivan. I got the odyssey cuz the sienna drove like a school bus while the odyssey drove like an accord. Its the big difference between honda and toyota. Toyotas are tuned drive like a japanese buick while Hondas are tuned to drive like a japanese bmw.
If I had it to do over I would 100% have shopped and probably bought the Odyssey. A church I belonged to had one as a spare vehicle they loaned out to members in need. I borrowed it a few times when my car was in the shop, and I liked driving it. It was still larger than I prefer, but it at least handled crisply and had good power.
Read this over a couple of times and really felt your pain. Very glad you have come through this and doing great now. Thanks for sharing some difficult times and experiences.
Thank you. It was delicate to write this as I didn’t want to go into the specifics of the marriage. I’m glad that I was able to stay on the right side of that line, while still transmitting how painful it all was.
There’s nothing like a good road trip – even in a Toyota minivan – to clear your head and open up the mind. That seems to be something that many of us can relate to, no matter what the circumstances. Thanks for taking us on this part of the journey.
Indeed. My Tennessee road trip sure gave me some clarity.
Jim, I had no idea about the trials and tribulations of your first marriage. Sometimes its good to have a mechanical “friend” to help get you through. Wishing you all the best.
Thank you. I haven’t written about it much. Even though I’m pretty open about my life on the Internet, I have a rule: don’t tell the stories that aren’t mine to tell. The full story of my marriage involve someone who’s not me, so I have to keep a lot of that off the Internet.
If you ever bought a minivan that wasn’t a Plymouth, Dodge, or Chrysler you didn’t do it correctly.
lol. Let’s just say that the winds were blowing toward Toyota in my marriage and I decided to fall into line.
I do not envy you one whit over this chapter in your life. What’s funny is that my own experience was almost a mirror image. The marriage had challenges but survived them and became stronger. And during this time I had a big Ford van that I loved but did not always treat me as well as your Toyota treated you.
That’s how it’s supposed to work – you survive the challenges and the marriage gets stronger. I wish my first wife and I could have managed that, but we just didn’t.
Back when I was commuting daily, I would joke that every guy who drove a minivan was an almost instant candidate for road rage. But I really didn’t think about the family stresses that prompted the need for that vehicle. Thanks for an overdue revelation.
Yeah, there’s probably some universal truth to that.
Ah, marriage. Now I got married late in life at 48. So no prior experience. That can be both good and bad. The bad being that you can be set in your ways and your ways become my way or the highways. Compromise is not in your skills since you never had to use such a skill on a daily interpersonal relationship. The good part is that, in theory, you have become wise over time and can take things in stride. Now my wife I quite younger than me and I felt I needed to show her the ropes in her new country especially with no family or friends. After about two years that was all that was needed. Took me a few more years to realize that which is probably why she was a little put off. I adjusted to that and went to take things in stride by adapting to her which worked.
She is a very capable, smart and tough woman now. Her friends, younger and older, call her the Boss when they look to her for comment. Hey, when you grow up in the jungles of the Philippines poor, and forage for fruits in the jungle and learn to hunt wild boar, you are pretty tough when needed. She hasn’t lost her hunting skill as she went out and shot a wild boar back in January 2023 when visiting relatives out in the boonies Oh, and in snow she can put chains on her car in under 20 minutes. I have never put on chains, go figure.
When I married the second time I’d become extremely set in my ways and even after 10 years I’m still trying to find the right balance of insisting on what matters and adapting to what doesn’t.
Wow. This touched me in so many ways.
My parents were older when I came along- dad 40 and mom 42. I’ve written a whee but about my dad, but not much. He was drafted into WW2 while my mom was pregnant with my second sister. My oldest sister was 20 years older than me so we had serious generation gaps. (I have 4 sisters, but the oldest passed away many years ago)
When dad came home he became an alcoholic. And he was very mean.
Did you know that if you don’t like baseball, hot dogs, apple pie or Chevrolet, well you couldn’t possibly be his son, so he told me.
When I met Cindy in 1983, and we married in 1984, she knew that dad and I barely got along. She accepted that fact and we actually have owned many Chevrolet cars!
It took me no time at all to say i would never be like my dad. I grew to forgive him, and we had a better relationship. In fact I’m working on my next installment about one of his cars.
I’m truly sorry you had to go through this. It’s never easy.
My favorite car today is my 1978 Cadillac Fleetwood. My wife bought it for me and it’s very special.
Sounds like your dad had a lot of anger and maybe even hatred that had nothing to do with you, but which he took out on you. I’m sorry that was your reality.
Jim, this was a very powerful read and it took me a while to let it all sink in. This reminded me of the stories of struggles with parents, spouses, and/or alcoholism from other authors here at CC, most notably Paul, Daniel Stern, RL Plaut, and Joseph Dennis.
I’m glad you were able to find yourself in a much better place after all of this receded in the rearview mirror.
Thank you. I’m happy too. It wasn’t certain at all that I’d come out okay, while I was living through it.
Like Delray wrote above, it took me a while for this to sink in as well. I read this yesterday, but couldn’t find the words to comment. As someone who struggles with sharing personal stories with others, I deeply admire folks like yourself who can communicate these types of things so effectively.
On the minivan front, I also delayed the (seemingly inevitable) minivan purchase since I considered the things so dang boring. I felt it was like a humiliating surrender for a car enthusiast, but once I bit the bullet and bought one, I never regretted it. We still have that van (a 2010 Odyssey that now has 178,000 mi.), and I find it mildly amusing that I’ve put more miles on that car than any other.
One way I’m like my dad is that telling my personal stories, figuring out how to craft them to not throw others under the bus while still remaining true, helps me make sense of my life so I can move forward with equanimity.
I wish they still made minivans the size of the originals. That would be a terrific vehicle for me now.
So sorry you had to go through all of that. I’ll be 32 in March while still single (never married) and living with my parents. There’s just nowhere else for me to go right now that I can realistically afford, and nobody at the moment who’s interested in dating me. But it might be all for the better in the end as I don’t want to become someone else’s burden (I have autism and am SUPER sensitive to certain noises & other things people might do that distract me), and sooner or later somebody will have to take over my parents’ place when they’re no longer around (it might as well be me so it stays in the family; PLUS the mortgage is already paid off!). Several others around my age & younger have succeeded, but for someone like me, getting married & starting a family is COMPLETELY out of the cards right now. I have an otherwise decent life going for me and don’t want to mess it up!
The Toyota Sienna DEFINITELY served you well during those years. And I’m with you on the size of all the old minivans. The closest modern equivalent is the Ford Transit/Tourneo Connect, but that model is no longer sold in the US as of the 2024 model year. I hope my 2016 serves me well for a decade or more!