This is Ria. Welcome to Little Stories for Tiny People.
Buckle up for this sweet, sleepy story about a lovable van.
You heard that right.
This story is about a minivan.
You named Pearl. Take it away, Sophie.
Remember, there are no pictures.
You have to imagine the pictures in your mind.
You can imagine them however you want.
Okay, here you go. Pearl wished she could straighten her hat.
It's listing. It's definitely listing.
But she couldn't straighten her hat.
She had to focus on these winding turns.
The road seemed to lift up before her.
She wasn't used to steep inclines.
She liked quiet neighborhood streets.
The occasional suspension bridge.
A drive through the countryside.
Not this. Not this twisting, turning, guard rail lacking.
Dad, look. There's a lake down there.
Oh, wow. What? No, don't you look.
You focus on ten and two, sir.
Mom, are those bighorn sheep?
There you go. The sweetheart can look all she wants.
Wow, they're beautiful.
Pearl kept her attention on the road as it wound upwards, taking them higher and higher.
It felt as though they were traveling above the clouds.
She could sense little old soul sitting tall in his seat in the second row trying to see everything.
Firecracker smushed his face into the back window.
She felt mini sweethearts little fingers drumming into the upholstery.
Pearl knew she'd be clutching giraffe with her free hand.
And despite her fears, that all began with what if, but seemed to trail off before reaching anything tangible.
Pearl trusted the gentleman.
There was no one she'd rather have at the wheel in that particular moment.
The road curved in a wide arc.
And it seemed like the whole world came into view below.
Pearl had never been so conscious of the precious cargo she carried as when she got a glimpse of the cavernous drop off her right side.
The air grew thin as she gripped the road on its winding ascent.
Clouds hung below in the sky.
The sun was a familiar friend coming in for a hug.
And after a few more hairpin turns, Pearl felt the ground beneath her tires grow level.
The gentleman, the sweetheart, little old soul, firecracker, and mini sweetheart all started chattering at once as if they'd been holding their breath for the last leg of the journey.
Pearl's suspension sighed with relief.
She laughed at herself.
Her hat was fine, not listing at all.
She eased into an open parking spot next to an enormous truck.
Her precious cargo, her dear family clambered out of her doors to get a look at the view.
She felt little old soul's palm pat her on the side door.
A silent thank you, perhaps.
She'd done it, hadn't she?
All that they'd asked of her.
The adventures, the questionable roads, everything.
And now she'd done this.
The big climb. But to understand this moment, and to understand what happened after it, we have to go back.
We have to put this story in reverse and go back to the beginning.
Or at least, back to a time before Pearl was even Pearl.
After untold months of stillness in the shadow of the cramped garage, surrounded by a bramble of bikes, hula hoops, boxes of old linens, and who knows what else, her engine hummed to life.
The first thing she felt was that familiar rattle, like a subtle cough that was never diagnosed and never went away.
The second thing she felt was the familiar itch of the matchbox car wedged beneath the middle seat in the third row, the ridges of its tiny wheels digging into the carpet.
She had heard people discuss having spinach in one's tooth or wondering if there was any there.
She never quite understood how the spinach got inside the tooth or why they ate so much spinach to begin with.
But that matchbox car, she imagined, felt exactly the same way to her as the spinach did to the people.
The radio barked to life.
It's your Saturday wake -up call.
Let's hear who's on the line from - Someone clicked a button.
That's when she finally took note of the people standing around.
You have to forgive her for this.
It had been untold months since she'd done anything but sleep.
She felt as groggy as you do when you've napped too long.
You know what I mean.
What's the mileage?
128. Not bad for the year.
She knew that voice.
It was the race car champion.
Hm, okay. Want to take her first spin?
Said the champion. And so, for the first time in many months, she left the dark of the garage.
And for the first time in much longer, she was driven by someone new.
Imagine if you'd just stumbled out of bed, disoriented, and you were told, in no uncertain terms, to go run a mile.
Hah! You'd be thinking, but I'm so tired.
Also, I'm out of shape.
Also, I need a glass of water first.
That's how she felt just then.
For a few minutes, her thoughts were thus, I need a few minutes to warm up here.
That rattle? It's probably nothing.
That dent on my front bumper was not my fault.
You'll have to ask the race car driver about that one.
I'll give you a hint.
It involved a fire hydrant.
Oh no, oh no, I think my windshield washing fluid is empty.
Don't try to use it.
But once she made it around a third of the neighborhood, the rattle, barely a whisper above the hum of the engine, the windshield washing fluid not on anyone's mind, given the steady rain, she relaxed and drove.
It was like riding a bicycle.
For you and me, at least.
Mini -vans can't ride bicycles.
The rain pattered against the windshield as she carried the people around the neighborhood.
The man driving was heavier in the seat than the race car champion, but had a light touch on the gas pedal, a confident but gentle grip on the wheel.
The gentleman. She thought that's what he was.
The gentleman. She wondered if the race car champion was wishing he could reach over, past the gentleman, put his own foot in the gas, zoom them all forward in that jerky way he enjoyed so much.
How you doing over there?
She mused. Look at this.
We are a full three car lengths behind that station wagon.
You must be getting antsy.
She had herself a chuckle.
She'd felt the dust accumulating on her from all those months in the garage and this rain.
Well, it wasn't a proper washing, but it would have to do drive smooth.
The gentleman remarked.
Yep. You know, we thought we'd never want to van, but now I can't imagine not having one.
The gentleman was having an unnecessary slap to the dashboard as if to tell her not to convince this guy.
Otherwise it was strange to hear oneself talked about and in such clinical terms.
What about my sparkling personality?
Hmm. She wondered at all this attention.
She was getting, she got her answers soon enough that very afternoon.
The gentleman drove her to a new place.
Oh, the radio in this car actually works.
That's new. The gentleman's wife took a whole three minutes, moving all the mirrors, adjusting her seat way forward to fit her frame, then putting it back just to touch because her round tummy was getting squished by the steering wheel.
She acquainted herself with every single item on the dashboard, looking over every button until finally the gentleman said, you planning to go anywhere, honey?
She reversed out of the driveway.
She drove so cautiously, so slowly, one could either want to shake her and say, don't we have places to be or love her for it?
She eased around the block traveling past sycamore trees, leaning over the street, back to the driveway, outside the car.
She paced around, resting her hand on the hood, studying the paint color.
We need to give it a name.
Do we? Yes. The woman said solemnly, her name is Pearl.
It was overcast, but Pearl felt as though the sun was beating down in her exterior.
Is it hot out here?
It feels hot. No one had ever thought to give her a name before.
That was her thing.
She gave the names, never the other way.
My name is Pearl. She thought to herself, the blazing heat of bashfulness, giving way to a warm hum.
Pearl gave the woman a name, too, the sweetheart.
In a few hours, Pearl felt more connected to these two people than she'd felt with the last family over the course of years.
Already, she had a new lease on life.
But then, everything changed again, in an instant.
Pearl was in the driveway peering into the garage attached to the house.
It had plenty of room for her, or it would have, except one half of it was filled with items seemingly fit for a junkyard, and the other half was taken up by another car.
Pearl couldn't see the car, only the dusty cover thrown over it.
It gave her a chill to see it there, cast all in shadow.
Who's under there? But her thoughts were interrupted by the gentleman approaching with a contraption.
Upon request, she opened her sliding door, and he set to work trying to force the thing into one of the seats.
Pearl flinched, and the sensation of him wrestling with her reminded her of the racecar driver doing the very same thing.
Couldn't have made this simple to install, could they?
Pearl knew then that there was someone she had yet to meet.
She felt a pinch as the gentleman cinched the contraption into place.
There, that's it. He went into the house.
Not a minute later, he returned, along with the sweetheart and someone else.
There are moments in life that break it forever into before and after.
Meeting this new person was a before and after moment for Pearl.
From the first time, she saw him toddle out of the house hand in hand with the sweetheart, his big eyes filled with curious curiosity.
That was it. Pearl had never felt this way about anyone.
It was as if she'd only been running on five cylinders, and the sixth was just waiting around for him to rumble to life.
It wasn't anything he said, which was not much at first.
It was the way he carried himself, the look in his eyes, the fact that he seemed like a miniature old man rather than a little boy when he settled into his seat for the first time.
He glanced around with those big eyes of his and said, ship, my ship.
Pearl thought she might spontaneously combust.
I will be your ship and you, my dear, Pearl whispered.
You will be little old soul.
This family, this sweet family grew.
A few weeks after Pearl was brought home to her spot in the driveway, Firecracker arrived, so named for his frequent outbursts from the back seat.
For nearly three years, Pearl carried these four people, taking them to the zoo where peacocks brushed up against her in the parking lot, a county fair where she squeezed into a grassy spot and spent hours watching the ferris wheel turn, a concert in an open field where with her radio silent and her
windows ajar, she soaked up the music and imagined setting out on the open road.
And of course, there were the day to day routines, the commutes around town, the stops at the grocery store where Pearl tried not to fret every time a shopping cart approached.
Hold it right there, buddy.
That's close enough.
And just before the three year mark, many sweetheart arrived, a tiny bundle of lovable angst so named for her uncanny likeness to the sweetheart herself.
That's when the real adventures began.
Over the next few years, Pearl was at the center of so many things, games, like when the sweetheart convinced Minnie sweetheart that she could, with her chubby little index finger, magically make the sliding door close with just a tap.
Okay, reach up and touch the handle.
Here? Yep. Give it a tap.
Pearl watched as the sweetheart, standing a few yards away, pressed a button on her key fob, just as her little lookalike touched a tiny finger to the handle of the door.
See, you did it. There were emergencies too.
Once, Pearl was startled awake in the middle of the night.
In her addled state, she thought it was the race car driver from the time before, gripping her wheel like he was in some kind of car chase.
But it was the gentleman, driving in an ungentlemanly manner, racing to the hospital, with firecracker whimpering in the back seat.
Pearl could feel the heat coming off the little fellow, seeming to fill up her cabin.
There was so much more.
How do you sum up 80 ,000 miles?
Traffic jams, close calls, the occasional hailstorm, the was a nail.
I definitely ran over a nail.
The times, the sweetheart, waited a touch too long to fill up the gas tank.
Honey? Hey, so I ran out of gas.
Again. There was laughter and tears, music and a lot of singing, much of it off key.
And there were hours and hours of silence when all that could be heard was the turning of pages of books splayed in laps, the scrape of little fingers running beneath lines of text.
The children's legs grew, their feet able to kick the seats in front of them.
Hey, quit it, will ya?
And one day, sunny, warm, the perfect kind of day to clean out a car, the gentleman appeared.
He opened the sliding door and removed the last car seat from the second row.
He's cleaning it, Pearl told herself, getting out the crumbs.
He'll be back with it any minute now, but the gentleman did not return.
The following day, Minnie Sweetheart climbed in the back and sat on the seat itself with nothing to prop her up.
But Minnie Sweetheart, Pearl thought, she's a baby.
Isn't she a baby? Not anymore.
Soon after that, on a clear day on the edge of summer, Pearl was fitted with her hat.
This is the biggest one we have, a woman said, helping the gentleman get it situated.
Y 'all going on a trip?
Cross country, heading to the mountains in a few weeks.
The mountains, Pearl repeated.
I've never worn a hat and I've never been to the mountains.
She could not decide which of these things was more exciting.
Two weeks later, weeks that unfolded so slowly, it was as if the seconds ticked by in time with her lowest windshield wiper speed, seeming to slow down ever further as her anticipation grew.
Pearl, eased out of the driveway in the manner of an older gentleman with rickety knees easing out of a comfortable armchair.
She was sluggish not because it was so early, the sun's first light just a glimmer above the trees, but due to the tremendous weight of what seemed to be the family's every earthly possession, stuffed into her hat, as well as every cubic inch of her cargo area, the rear window was covered, utterly useless
to the sweetheart as she drove out the neighborhood as if the family wished only to look ahead to the future.
And so it was, with the sweetheart at the wheel, the gentleman dozing in the passenger seat, little old soul staring out the window, firecracker rereading a favorite comic book and mini sweetheart whispering to giraffe that together with Pearl carrying them, they embarked on a wondrous adventure.
It is strange how time itself can seem to change speed.
The two weeks leading up to the big trip might have crept along like a car pushed in neutral across a flat road, but the following two weeks, the heart of the trip passed in a blur like a race car whipping around the curve of a track.
It was not until they reached the mountains and Pearl was asked to do the greatest task of all, ascend the climb, that time seemed to slow to a reasonable pace, which takes us back to that beautiful moment when she made it finally to the pinnacle, thousands of vertical feet up, resting in the parking
lot, grateful that every part of her necessary for the climb had worked as expected.
Time seemed to stop altogether for hours as the family, her dear family, explored the mountain top.
They returned radiant and smiling, piling into her sun -baked seats, chattering on about the view, the clouds, the awkward family photo another sightseer had kindly taken of them, and Pearl began the journey down, silently hoping for and receiving first gear.
My breaks, thank you sir, she whispered to the gentleman.
She was pleased to find that her hat was as secure and as stylish as ever.
Strangely, it was that thought, the fact that she had done it all and done it with her hat firmly in place, it was that thought that stayed with her as she descended through the winding turns down the mountainside.
This sense of pride at a job well done was still with her when, near the bottom of the long road, the sweetheart patted the dashboard in what Pearl took as an affectionate acknowledgement of all she'd done, how trustworthy she'd been, how loyal, but then the sweetheart, her palm still warm in the dash,
whispered, I can't believe we're getting a new car.
Pearl half expected the gentleman to respond with some sort of surprised exclamation, laughter perhaps, a new car, how preposterous, how could we ever replace Pearl?
But he didn't say that.
Instead, quietly, he said, I know, that was it, nothing more.
Pearl wanted to screech do a halt, stop dead in her tracks, but she would never do that.
She drove down the mountain and kept between the bright lines, feeling as if she were watching herself from a great height from the mountain top itself.
The sweetheart's words, those heartbreaking words, rang through Pearl as if she'd been struck like a bell and they kept ringing like a car with its alarm going off in the middle of nowhere, no one there to turn it off, the entire trip home.
Back in the driveway, back in the very same spot where she'd first parked, where her entire life had shifted into a new gear, the gentleman, with help from little old soul, removed Pearl's hat.
Her top felt unbearably cold without it there.
As little old soul headed off, he patted Pearl's hood, a silent goodbye perhaps.
A few weeks later, on a breezy day on the brink of autumn, Pearl watched as the gentleman removed the cover from the car in the shadow of the garage, so that's who was under there.
It was a compact, zippy car, with just two doors.
He parked it in the street, then spent time cleaning out more space where it had been for so long.
Pearl observed him with a growing sense of unease.
Why does he need so much space in there?
The sweetheart's words came to her then.
I can't believe we're getting a new car.
Dread settled in her, roiling her insides, like oil left too long between changes.
Pearl wished she could drive off by herself, prove she could still go on adventures, prove she wasn't done, but she wasn't one of those fancy new cars that could drive themselves.
She was old. That was clear now.
The gentleman finished his task and settled in behind her wheel, without ceremony.
What about your seatbelt?
Don't you need your seatbelt?
He put Pearl in reverse, backed out of the driveway, then drove forward into that newly cleared out space in the garage but little old soul, Pearl whispered.
Firecracker, mini sweetheart, they need me.
The gentleman, who Pearl now believed might have been misnamed from the beginning, shut off Pearl's engine.
The world went dark.
Pearl was in the shadow of the garage, beneath a cover for an embarrassingly long time.
Years, seasons came and went.
The garage door rattled open and closed, innumerable times.
Pearl slept, deep in a dreamless sleep.
Until one day, the garage door creaked open and someone pulled away her cover.
Pearl awakened to two people settling into her front seats.
It had been so long since she had been awake.
It took her a minute to understand it was not a dream.
A voice came from the passenger seat, piercing the years long silence.
Before you do anything, check your mirrors.
Yep, that's right, the sweetheart.
Next, take the key, let's see if she starts.
We should have driven her more.
Pearl was about to comment, about to say, yeah, you should have.
When the driver, the mystery driver, turned the key in her ignition and her engine rumbled to life.
As Pearl backed out of the garage, easily, no signs of damage from her sedentary life, she wondered about the driver.
A memory came to her in a flash of another time she'd been driven by someone new, the gentleman, with the race car champion in the passenger seat.
I'm being sold. I'm being sold to this new, but Pearl's thoughts were interrupted.
Which way should I go?
Such a brief sentence.
Five words. The sweetheart murmured a reply, but Pearl didn't hear it.
She was stuck on that voice.
Not the timber of it, but the cadence.
So familiar, impossible.
Pearl whispered as she obligingly turned right.
She felt the driver's grip on the wheel.
It was so very like, the gentleman's.
Mom, should I take the right?
Yeah, you can turn on red here.
Slowly. Mom. That one word said everything.
So it was true, even though it couldn't be.
Then, Pearl and the sweetheart whispered something at the very same time.
How are you old enough to drive?
Pearl thought her engine might seize up.
Little old soul had a confident but gentle grip on the wheel.
Did you say something, mom?
Nothing. You're doing great, honey.
Pearl felt the sweetheart's palm on the dash.
You're doing great too, Pearl.
I'm so glad we kept this car.
Excellent safety rating.
Drive smooth, little old soul remarked.
Before we got Pearl, the sweetheart said, seeming to relax for the first time since getting in.
I didn't want to be seen in a minivan.
It's funny how things change.
Yes, Pearl thought.
Yes, it is. There are moments in life that break it into before and after.
Pearl learned that long ago, she had not known it could happen more than once.
As she drove her precious cargo around the loop of the neighborhood, she had a feeling more adventures awaited her.
Maybe even another hat.
I have a seasoned van, one might say, despite the fact that the door sticks and it is no great beauty.
It has carried us thousands of miles on adventures we will not soon forget.
I love it. No matter what happens, it will always hold a dedicated spot in the parking lot of my heart.
I hope you enjoyed the story.
Little Stories for Tiny People is written, performed, and produced by me, Rhea Pector.
My in -house tech director, Peter Kay, puts my stories in the internet for all of you to enjoy.
Thank you to my Little Stories premium subscribers for making it possible for me to keep sharing my stories with families around the world, to get more of the stories you love, access to Little Stories for Sleep, an exclusive bedtime podcast, and ad free listening, join or gift a subscription at littlestoriespremium .com.
Thank you to Sophie for the super important reminder message at the beginning, and thank you to the premium subscribers who supplied sound effects used in this story.
Thank you to Calvin, Arthur, Sidra, James, Leo, Vivian, Holly, Gemma, Erin, and Salu.
And thank you, as always, for listening in.
Thank you.
