An Almost Father's Day Tale

Murphy Mornings and Almost Margarita Summer

This next story I heard second hand from my wife. Half of me wishes I had been there, the other half is grateful I was not. She had had one of those mornings. You know the kind. Everyone knows the kind of morning where nothing goes right. I call them Murphy mornings after Murphy's Law. These mornings have a particular flavor the moment you roll over an hour or two before you have to get up and you realize you can't get back to sleep. They are particularly troublesome when you have kids. This is not so much because kids are each little proofs for the theory of Murphy's Law running around, even though they are that, but it is more because each child's problems can cascade from and on top of each other, making an otherwise chaotic situation exponentially more so.

My wife rolled over last Saturday morning at seven o'clock and couldn't get back to sleep. She works full time and is seven months pregnant, so what would have otherwise started as a disappointing morning, was closer to a minor tragedy. She resigned herself to it in patient stride as she does with calamity and serendipity alike, and got out of bed. Recently, I've been phoning in the mornings, either literally by giving either or both of the children phones and going back to bed, or else putting on a show and hoping for enough of their contentment to be left alone to be able to sleep for another hour. It never works. Usually, between both of their wants and needs, they both bat at my head every five to ten minutes to get whatever cooperation from me they can muster. Whereas the phone properly anesthetizes them almost to the point of being catatonic. So, this morning, I gave them both phones so we could, I thought, both sleep in a little longer. A selfless gesture, I thought. Boy, was I wrong!

The problem with the phones, as anyone who has contact with kids that are given them can attest, is they have a dopaminergic effect that once given, acts as powerfully in the child's brain as narcotics do to an addict. Taking away a phone from a child feels very much like wandering into a crack den and knocking a crack pipe out of the hand of the addict mid suck, with very similar reactions. This is the situation I unwittingly left my wife with.

She rolled out of bed, figuratively knocked the phones out of our little addicts hands, and dealt with the consequential wailing and gnashing. She fed them, changed the three year old’s diaper, and made herself breakfast, amidst the continual stream of wailing complaints and continuous bickering and backbiting that only two children whose dad was looking for minor relief by way of interactive display, know how to give.

She also let me, the progenitor of this minor crisis, sleep in. Ironically, every time I rolled over and woke up, the house was inexplicably serene. I usually get up when the children are in chaos mode, but this morning, I thought to myself, they must be happy. All seemed to be right with the world, I thought, because I didn't hear a thing.

Once I got up, I was quickly disabused of this notion. Contrary to what the bards of the 70’s proclaimed, the kids were not, in fact, alright. Over coffee, my wife and I decided to conquer our problems the very old fashioned way, through the tactics of divide and conquer. The house was a wreck and the pantry was bare. I somehow came up with the long stick, and got the house, while she decided to go grocery shopping with both children! Despite my tepid, but very real, offers to the reverse.

On the way, the complaining didn't mitigate. After two hours of this kind of behavior, my wife lost it by means of humor and jokingly told them she would throw them out their windows if they continued. In those very terms. The six year old didn't approve and started freaking out, to which my wife replied, she wasn't going to actually defenestrate them. Apparently, I had already used that same exact threat, in those same exact words, and then had to explain their meaning to the six year old, because without batting an eye, she told my wife in no uncertain terms how little she thought of being threatened of her and her three year old sister being tossed from the windows of the car.

Once they got to the store, they headed straight for the card aisle to get daddy, who wasn't there, a father's day card. Now, much to my chagrin, my toots as of late have been as loud and as sudden as a fog horn in a night fog. My wife found the perfect card for me that was very on topic, I was later told. When she showed the six year old the card, though, the six year old gave her the not impressed kid meme look.

A random lady in the boomer generation walked around the corner and also, apparently, thought similarly to the six year old, because she too, shot my wife the same look the six year old did. Instead of the fart card, the six year old found her own card and the three year old found a shiny one as well.

After that they were off to the diaper aisle for the three year old who has only just last week dipped her toe into the unchartered waters of potty training. We got her her own potty seat with a Disney kids Spidey and two Hulks, two, she likes to remind us, two Hulks. While in this aisle this same three year old caught sight of various other potty seats she had hitherto been unaware of. “Ooooooh.” She said, checking them out like she was a middle aged mom shopping for fabrics for herself and decor at Hobby Lobby for her first kid going to college, “look at those potties! That one has a Bluey on it.” To which my wife had to remind her of the potty she already had and make a quick escape.

Unfortunately for my poor wife, the diaper aisle is very close to the toy aisle. The three year old prefers to roam the store on her own and on seeing the toy aisle she said, “I like toys.” My wife had to pull her physically away from the aisle and through the rest of the store the three year old persisted in telling her of her affinity for toys. By the time my wife got to the aisle with the dryer sheets, the three year old realized she wasn't getting through, so she staged a full scale strike. She sprawled her body across the aisle and stated very firmly that she liked toys, which ended up getting her banished to the cart.

Being caged didn't deter her from whining about her plight to my wife across the next three aisles. At one point my wife cracked the old, “would you like some cheese with your whine?” joke to the three year old. Out of nowhere the six year old laughed out loud and unironically told my wife it was a funny joke and she should tell it to me, the arbiter of humor in the house, I guess? Cheese jokes are comedy gold it would seem, but farts and defenestration are right out.

By that time the shopping was done and it was time to check everything out. Here was yet one more opportunity for the three year old to pitch yet another fit. This time she wanted a treat, but since she can't say her R's (or her L's) she pronounces it, tweet. She screamed, she cried, but my strong wife held fast. Suddenly, with tears still trickling down her little cheeks, she stopped and said, “Actuawwy…I think I want something fwuffy.” She was back to the toys again, on second thought. As if that would help her cause in any way. Like my wife after all that would take her all the way back to the toy aisle and let her have her pick of whatever she desired, instead of, you know, finishing bagging and paying for all the food the three year old would be consuming over the course of the next week.

My wife couldn't even look forward to a drink which she richly deserved when she got home. We are now counting down the days to margarita summer, though. It's fifty six, by the way. Fifty six days to a new baby, new chaos, and margarita summer.