Started driving with adaptive equipment when I was sixteen (because of course I haaaad to, like any other kid my age), but I was loathe to drive a van. Because it was the default choice for someone with compromised mobility, and of course I haaaad to break the mold (notice a theme?)... Turns out no one had thought to put an electric hand brake in a non-van because... No one had done it before. Allegedly we might have been a first in North America, lol. But my parents' love was unquestionably deep enough to support my stubbornness, nay, "sassyness." So for the time being my parents adapted my dad's station wagon, and while I could drive I was dependent on a passenger or a helper at my destination to unload my chair or walker.
This feigned independence turned into a genuine one when, in 2003, my parents gave me a van. I had officially decided not to return to Southern California for school and began a new phase of my life. And independently commuted to college, stores, restaurants, bars, frat parties etcetera. I was independent enough to fall in love with a boy whose love, support, and help I am completely and shamelessly dependent on a decade later.
But that van was a piece or the product of the acceptance puzzle I struggled with for two decades. We brought home or sons from the hospital in it and have made countless trips across the country (okay like three big ones and a bunch of smaller ones). And it's been slowly dying over the last eighteen months.
Still sad to see it go. Good luck and Godspeed.
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