When Mary van Wijngaarden bought a new car in October, she did not want to trade in her trusty Toyota van just yet.
Her son and his family would visit for Christmas, and she would need it to shuttle their crew. That was not the only reason for not trading it though. The van was the third the family had owned, purchased after their fourth child was born in 2008. It was their best find to date, a pristine vehicle, with a mere 2,000 miles on it at the time.
After 18 years, it held many happy memories, and van Wijngaarden, a parishioner of Holy Spirit Church in Annandale, was thinking someone else could put it to good use. “I had been thinking I would love to be able to give this car to somebody who could really use it,” she said.
Fast forward to April, the van was still in the family’s driveway, and she decided that it really needed to go. “I’m not going to hold on to the (van) for the once a year that” my children visit, she remembered thinking. “It’s time to figure this out.”
A few days later she opened the Catholic Herald and a lightbulb went off as she read the story of a mom, Regina Yeboah Asuamah, and her quadruplets. It was one line, she said, about the mom being unable to drive her babies anywhere because she only had a small vehicle. She knew what she would do with her van: she would donate it to Yeboah Asuamah. Up to now Yeboah Asuamah and her brood sometimes needed two vehicles to attend their medical appointments, and this could be hard to arrange at times, with extended waits.
And so, on a beautiful spring morning, van Wijngaarden handed the Toyota Sienna van keys to a beaming Yeboah Asuamah. There for the big moment were Theresa Talavera, head of the St. Louis Church Mothers’ Group in Alexandria, and Baaba Andoh, a close family friend of Yeboah Asuamah. Talavera spearheaded an effort to help the new mom of quadruplets, three boys and a girl, after a common acquaintance told her of Yeboah Asuamah’s plight. Together with her Mothers’ Group, they have helped the new mom with baby care, meals and laundry. Van Wijngaarden contacted Talavera, a homeschooling mother of 10, to offer her van after reading the Catholic Herald story. Talavera and her husband, Alex, are also godparents to Yeboah Asuamah’s three boys.
Yeboah Asuamah gave birth in October to her four babies at 31-weeks’ gestation. Her husband is in Ghana where he has been waiting since 2019 for his immigration paperwork to make its way through the convoluted process. She had to stop working after the babies’ birth. She started work again recently, a few hours a week while Andoh stays with the babies.
The vehicle will change their lives, Yeboah Asuamah said, thrilled to sit in the driver’s seat and look around while others were arranging the babies’ car seats in the van.
“It’s really going to help,” she said. “I am grateful for such a gesture,” and thankful for the help from everyone, she added.
In the end van Wijngaarden says Yeboah Asuamah’s discreet humility and calm made the most lasting impression. She said she returned home and told her husband that she had just met some “pretty amazing women.”
“I was so humbled being in that room,” with Regina, her family friend, and Talavera, she said. “The children were so calm, with their beautiful eyes and their smiles. Regina is so calm, so humble, grateful and willing to let people help her,” which is not easy for everyone, van Wijngaarden said.
Chapman is a freelancer in Alexandria.
