Tag Archives: fatherhood

I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t know everything

My son has come to the conclusion that I know the answer to every question. I have mixed feelings about this development. It is much better than having him conclude that I am ignorant in all things and not worth the time of his curious mind. Yet, it is a tad disheartening to know that I am being thought a liar every time I answer a question with, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know.” is not an acceptable answer. The boy knows that I do know. Of course I know. I know everything. If I say I don’t know, it’s because I’m too lazy to explain the complex workings of the world or I am part of some adult conspiracy to keep kids in the dark concerning the most important facts about life.

And the facts he yearns to know are vitally important to his life. One of the questions that nags at him most often is, “Who sings this song?” when we are listening to the radio. Sometimes, I can answer him; sometimes I can’t. Whenever I have to tell him that I don’t know who sings this song, his face becomes clouded with suspicion. His gut tells him there is some reason why I am holding this information from him, some special reason why grown-ups are so secretive about this particular song. “Won’t you please tell me?” he begs, hoping that by using a nice word and some emphasis he will find the key to unlock my stingy omnipotence.

Lately, he has fashioned a new phrase to combat my withholding of knowledge from him. “Won’t you tell me the whole truth?” he says whenever I answer a question with “I don’t know.” There’s a hint of accusation in this, which is, I suspect, a deliberate tactic by my little Perry Mason to let me know that he is on to my deceit and that I have only a short time to make my confession before he traps me within my own web of lies.

One day, we were riding in the car when we had to pull over to let an ambulance go by. “Follow the ambulance,” the boy commanded from his back-seat throne. “I want to see who’s dead.”

Of course, I couldn’t follow a speeding ambulance and it soon disappeared. Later, the ambulance passed us again, going in the opposite direction. “They must be taking somebody to the hospital,” I said.

“Who’s dead?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Won’t you please tell me?”

“How could I possibly know? I’ve been here with you the whole time.”

“Daddy, won’t you tell me the whole truth?”

“Okay,” I relented cracking the code of silence mandated by the secret circle of adulthood. “Old Joe Tootinbutt is dead,” I ad-libbed. “They’re taking him to the cemetery right now.”

The boy seemed satisfied. The conspiracy continues. . .

Scene in a crowded courtroom.

“You expect me to believe that you have no idea who killed Mr. Boddy in the library with the candlestick? Come now, Colonel Mustard, won’t you tell me the whole truth?” (Artist: James E. Taylor)

You are my sunshine, but not necessarily my only sunshine

“You are my sunshine,

my only sunshine (along with your brother, who is also my sunshine).

You (in concert with your brother) make me happy

when skies are gray . . .”

Since we’ve had our second child, we have been careful about the words to the little songs of endearment we sing to the baby. Not wanting to inspire jealousy by leaving the older sibling out, we do all we can to fit our high regard for everybody into the song.

This requires us to think on our feet, because few songs of endearment are intended to address multiple individuals. Imagine Roberta Flack singing, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Several Faces or Sinatra crooning that classic, It Had to be You. . . and That Other Guy Over There. It is probably for the best that most love songs focus upon a single individual, but this means that parents who need to spread the love around may have to cut and paste.

There is nothing so sweet and melodic as parents singing sweet nothings to their babies, except when the melody is held suspended by the insertion of clarifying, parenthetical phrases. These phrases must be added whenever Big Brother is within earshot. At his age, he gets fewer songs of his own. Therefore, he must be included as an addendum to his baby brother’s lullabies. This leads to verses like the one at the top.

We are lucky that our preschooler exhibits hardly any jealousy toward his baby brother. The big boy likes having a little brother. Our only worry about his attitude toward the baby is that he sometimes wants to hug his little brother too vigorously. He doesn’t quite understand how fragile a baby is. When he becomes most zealous to show affection for the baby, we stand guard, ready to prevent the reenactment of a scene from Of Mice and Men.

We are careful not to fritter away our good fortune. My wife often reminds me to avoid telling Big Brother that I can’t pay him immediate attention because I am tending to Little Brother. This could cause resentment. Instead, I have to make up excuses that sound something like, “I can’t play trains with you right now because I have to get all of the milk out of this bottle through this tiny hole. Luckily, your little brother is really good at this sort of thing. With his help, I’ll be done and ready to play with you by nightfall.”

My kids may grow up singing the wrong lyrics to many decades’ worth of popular (and unpopular) songs, and believing that babies take bottles to help rid their parents of troublesome milk surpluses, but I won’t laugh at them. As long as they like and respect each other, I’ll tolerate their crazy notions. To my boys, I will make every allowance for such misconceptions, because, as Debby Boone was fond of singing, “Y’all light up my life.”

Cowboy band

“But the Yellow Rose of Texas (and the Blue Marigold of West Virginia, and also the Purple Violet of Eastern Maryland) is the only gal for me.” (Photo: Russell Lee/U.S. Farm Security Administration)

 

Who’s the weirdo with the stroller?

I am a periodic sufferer of a condition. Since I can find no official name for this complaint, I am going to name it myself. My problem is called Empty Stroller Syndrome.

Empty Stroller Syndrome (ESS) occurs almost exclusively in fathers of young children. It manifests itself in well-populated areas, including public transportation. A bout of ESS is generally brought on when the mother takes the child from the stroller to some location disassociated from the father, who is left with an empty stroller and no child in sight.

It is important to note that if you are out in public with an empty baby stroller, but have no children in your life, you are not suffering from ESS. You are suffering from being one weird dude.

Empty Stroller Syndrome: the silent stigmatizer.

ESS is an often misunderstood condition due to the fact that, to the unfamiliar observer, the sufferer closely resembles the weird dude aforementioned. Lacking a nearby baby, there is no recognized protocol for differentiating the ESS sufferer from the weird dude.

It dawned upon me that I suffered from ESS while I was riding the metro train in Washington, D.C. With two small children, we have many accessories to carry with us on outings. These many necessities were secreted in and about our stroller, with heavy baggage hanging from each handle.

Every time we boarded the train, my wife took the baby out of the stroller and held him on her lap. When we could sit together, this presented quite a natural scene. But on the D.C. subway, parties often need to disperse, transforming me into a solitary man with his heavily weighted stroller.

Judging from the looks I received from fellow passengers, some sympathetic men recognized, or at least hoped they recognized, an all too familiar case of ESS. Other passengers merely wondered silently about that weird dude who used a baby stroller as a pushcart for his sundry, joyless bundles.

Without the baby in place, the stroller was unbalanced. At every change in momentum, it was liable to tip over backward. Not wanting to risk injuring others, I guarded it closely. This made me look less the innocent victim of a crowded transport system, and more the weird dude whose precious, precious collections of plastic spoons and acorns must be jealously protected from a covetous world.

The shame of ESS. In the past it was difficult to build awareness because fathers were so shamed by their condition that they would not allow themselves to be photographed with their empty strollers.

In most cases, it doesn’t matter to me what strangers think. But I’ve put a lot of work into this fathering business, and I’d rather not be thought of as some kind of unhinged stroller pervert. I have the children to prove that there is a perfectly reasonable pathology behind my distant, glassy stare. They are elsewhere on the train, with their mother, the one competent to be the guardian of cargo more important than empty strollers.

I tried to ease the suspicions of my close companions by turning and yelling things to my family that hinted at more than a passing acquaintance between them and myself. I gave up this tactic when it became clear that the crowd did not relish a loud conversation about the probability of there being a poopy diaper somewhere among them. For those who could not see the family to whom I was speaking, this talk only added to my mystique.

Alas, there was nothing to do but quietly endure my flare-up of Empty Stroller Syndrome. In the distance, I could hear people clucking over the baby. Nobody ever gushes about how adorable my empty stroller is. In silence, they avoid making eye contact with me.