As the old saying goes, money can’t buy happiness, we disagree.  We say it can.

“Now that I no longer have to worry about having a roof over my head or where my next meal will come from, I am happy.  Money now pays my bills, but it also pays for my housekeeper.  The fact that I do not have to do laundry, I promise, makes me crazy-happy!” -Aly

But money does not buy joy.  When we truly seek and find joy, regardless of our circumstances, happiness will follow.  Remember this:  Happiness can always exist without joy, but joy will never exist without happiness.  Here’s how we know:

Suffice to say, there was a period in our lives encompassed by circumstances seemingly straight out of a bad Hollywood script.  A really bad one.  It was the script that intertwines a pile of sh-doo-doo, and then adds a little more on top of that.  Yeah, that one.  Skip to scene four and open with single mom, six kids (we were in junior high), food stamps, and nearly homeless.  We said nearly.  And by “nearly,” we mean by a thread.

So, yes, we were in a dumpy house.  But the car was even dumpier.  Is that a word?  Having experienced that tin can on wheels, we say it is a superlative, noun, and a verb.  Dumpier must be a word.  This car was a chocolate brown station wagon that we affectionately called, “The Dragon Wagon.”  (says big, echoing voice)

The Dragon Wagon did not always go by this name.  She only acquired it in the last year or so of her life.  See, at a time most inconvenient, yes, when we had no money to repair her… Our Dragon Wagon decided she could not drive forward anymore.  Only in reverse.  To go anywhere in the Dragon Wagon, one was to simply turn the key and place it in reverse.  Then keep it there, because forward movement of any kind was not going to happen.  Press rewind.  Do the moonwalk.  But for the Dragon Wagon, there was no forward motion and no passing “Go.”  That is, unless, you passed it in a cloud of exhaust while going backwards.

So, rock star mom chauffeured her soon to be rock star kids to school. Yeah, BACKWEEERDZ.  It turned out to be perhaps one of the highlights of our Most Embarrassing Moments reel. In a cloud of smoke and a few backfires and engine gurgles, she navigated stop signs, corners, and probably someone’s pet, all through the cracked rearview mirror. Humiliated, we made her stop several blocks from the school so we could walk the rest of the way.  Of course, at that time, it never occurred to us to imagine how embarrassed she must have been.  True to selfless mom, she did what she had to do for the benefit of her children.   True to selfish kids, we did what we had to do…..  We ran away as far, and as fast as we could.

At that moment in our self-absorbed and awkard Junior High lives, we could not have been dealt worse cards in the deck.  We could not have been more embarrassed.  But we could not have laughed harder.  To this day, and even as I write it, we practically pee at the very thought of the smoking Dragon Wagon rolling down the neighborhood streets backwards!

Remember the scene from the animated movie, Cars, where the clunker tow truck, ‘Mater, speeds around in reverse?  Our kids thought it was a funny scene, but we had a particular reason to think it was hilarious! We all do, and the story comes up at family gatherings often.  It really was so humiliating, it was funny.  Ah, what a joyful time.  Really.

Sure, money to buy a fancy new car that day would have made us very happy.  Money to buy any new car, or any car that would drive forward, for that matter, would have made us happy.  But that day, it did not matter.  That day, mortified as we were, we still had a child-like ability to laugh because we had experienced the Dragon Wagon together.  As we ran away from the backwards smokebomb on wheels, laughing and crying as hard as we could, we knew one thing for sure. Without a doubt, no one on the planet had just experienced what we had experienced together in the Dragon Wagon.  Good for them, but really, joy for us.