By Shannon Carpenter

Greetings my fellow parental spiritual travelers. I can tell right now that your aura is full of laundry apprehension. What does your future bring? Behold the trash your kids have left in the back of your minivan. There, you will find your answers.

Once we open the door, I can see that the Cheez-It is waning, and the juice box is in retrograde. All is not lost. Let us continue our trash reading and decipher its meaning.

The half-melted Skittle clings to the floor with the iron grip of destiny. This means that your toddler has a lot of fight in him this day. There will be many difficulties transferring him from the car to his nap. But as the crusty toddler sock clings to the seatbelt, so does your own patience. You may not succeed in the transfer, but you can watch your TikToks from the front seat for an hour and be happy.

That is just the beginning of your day. We must consult the Tootsie Roll birth chart. Old and smushed, the Tootsie Roll has come out from under the seat. Life has many surprises left for you.

Your purpose is clear as you gaze at your completely wrecked minivan. Note that your child’s greasy handprints on the windows are in an eclipse season. Ah, a lifetime of unexplained worry is in your future. Will they grow up independent? Can they face the trauma of you taking 30 seconds to go to the bathroom? It is unclear, but I foresee little fists of fury beating on locked bathroom doors.

Knock, knock, knock. Your fate must be answered. But it does not have to be so bleak. A carwash will appear on the road you travel.

Muddy footprints on the back of the driver’s seat let us know that the carwash will be old-fashioned and require hard currency. No fancy debit cards for you, for the well of your bank is dry. But the vacuum is also defective and always runs longer than it should. Rejoice! And when that vacuum nozzle gets stuck on the wet wipe of doom and chokes like it needs the Heimlich, it will survive.

Patience, fellow traveler into the mystics of parenting and anxiety pills. Buddha your way to your happy place, a place where everyone throws their trash in the spare grocery bags you keep in the rear passenger seat pocket. In your happy place, you never think about how much braces are going to cost. 

Back to the reality of your future and your unclean minivan. It’s not only the refuse that allows us to read your future. The smell also has a tale to tell.

We are transported through a portal of time and space to ancient Babylon and the hanging gardens of dirty diapers. Their presence still lingers to this day in your minivan. The mildew of wet towels you forgot about long ago mixes with the essence of diaper, and the past becomes the present—becomes your future.

Embrace that future for it is all of ours, and in our solidarity, we can find a pressure washer that will get those old French fries out of the gears of your automatic door. 

Shannon Carpenter is the author of The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad Manual (Penguin, 2021).