Thanks to National Lampoon’s Vacation, a term was coined that would last for generations to come: the family truckster. A reliant, sturdy, spacious and family-oriented wagon. In Season 2 of Modern Family, everybody’s favourite father, Phil Dunphy, was devastated by the potential sale of their own truckster. A car long since retired to the garage by the family but not before the memories faded from site.
At some point, when you have a family, you find yourselves owning your own version of the ‘truckster’. For us, that moment arrived with I was pregnant with Little Miss and we realised our VW Golf wasn’t going to cut it for a family of 4 with a labrador we affectionately refer to as a dinosaur. That’s when we got our wagon: a Volvo V50. It was black, shiny, sleek and awesome. That car brought my daughter home from the hospital and has since seen too many road trips to count, car sickness from the kids, house-hunting adventures for Mr H and I and has also provided transportation for many of my soccer girls during our so-far-from-Paris-the-trains-don’t-go-there matches. It was our truckster.

So today, it should not have come as a surprise to me when we sold it that I would feel sad. You see, we cannot import our car as part of our upcoming move. So, along with our family car, we have started to slowly sell off bits of our Parisian life that cannot make the move with us. My little Buddy cried last night when we told him we were selling the car today. He said it made the move start to feel ‘real’ and I can only agree with him. It’s the first big thing we’ve done towards leaving Paris and I get it. It’s a lot for an adult to take in, never mind a 7 year old.

The Volvo was obviously just a car, but it was also an intricate part of many memories. To our former truckster, I say thanks for taking us to and from everywhere we dreamed to go safely. It was a tank of a car, no two ways about that, but it was also a dream to drive. It’s now someone else’s turn to make some family memories with it!


Photo credits: ABC’s Modern Family and Jennifer Hart