Tuesday evening, after a very long day, my husband drove up to the house with a large metal bolt embedded in the right rear tire of the van. As he pulled into the driveway and turned off the ignition, we could hear a faint, but audible, “hssssssst” as the tire was slowly losing air. Very tired eyes met mine from the driver’s seat. And as Daddy got out of the car, his girls inspected the rear tire and admired the hexagonal piece of metal protruding from the tire treads. After a quick hug and kiss, my husband turned his attention to the problem of the tire and the van.

The tire needed to be changed out, but there were some complicating factors. The first factor was a broken latch on the rear door of the van. The door could neither be opened from the inside or outside of the van. The latch was there cosmetically, but when squeezed, it would not engage the unlocking mechanism in the door. This was a big problem; it was through the rear door that the bolt holding and releasing the spare tire was accessed. Hmmmmmm! On to Plan B: we will access the spare tire by entering the van through the sliding side door.

The second complicating factor was that the interior of the van was filled with violins. Filled. My husband is a music teacher; he teaches at three different elementary schools; and at the beginning of the year there are a lot of instruments transported between the schools. A lot.

The third factor was that the rear seats in the van had to be removed in order to access the compartment that contained the car jack and also to loosen the bolt that would lower the spare tire from underneath the car. All these obstacles needed to be met and cleared away before the real work of changing the tire could even begin. And my husband hadn’t eaten dinner. And the sun was going down.

So he decided to move the van from the sloping driveway to the more level street in front of our house, eat some dinner, change his clothes, then tackle the multifaceted project before him. But he was about to receive unlooked for help from an unexpected source. Help came in the form of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, 11-year-old girl – our daughter, PX.

During the time when we were assessing and discussing the problem(s), she was fairly bursting with two hands ready to help and her quick mind already formulating an efficient plan-of-attack. Daddy still needed to eat dinner, but PX had already assumed her position as chief mechanic (or a diminutive assistant to the chief mechanic)! As it turned out, later related to me both by my husband and my daughter, she did most of the “work” involved – and loved every moment!

PX related to me – in detail – the whole process of jacking up the car, removing bolts, removing and replacing the tire and lowering the car back down again. She told me how she, by herself, jacked up the car by turning, turning, turning a metal rod attached to the car jack. She told me that she wanted to unbolt the wheel from the car, but Daddy said, “no.”

Daddy said she was a great help and probably could have done the whole thing herself. This is the kind of hands-on practical project that PX loves, loves, loves. She ended the evening telling me how her arms were sore from doing “all that work”, but she was also beaming with pride at her accomplishment.
“Mama, have you ever changed a tire?”
“No, honey, I never have.”