Nightmarriage 2012: Invisible Training Wheels

I have noticed that whenever my wife and I experience anything new in the realm of parenthood or “Babyland,” as I like to refer to it, we take extra safety precautions to ensure that all is well. If parenthood is a bicycle, that is, we reach for the training wheels when these incidents arise.

The week after Evie was born, Becki’s car wouldn’t start. The alternator had gone bad. Becki’s friend Jen insisted that her husband Scott could repair Becki’s Honda. Since Scott has motor oil in his veins instead of blood, Becki and I agreed to let him work his magic.

Jen and Scott live out of town. If I recall correctly, they live on those county roads that are numbered with four or five digits. This means it is virtually impossible to distinguish one road from another. “Is it County Road 52450, or County Road 54250?” Roads such as these all look the same by day, and even more alike by night.

Jen, who was six months pregnant with her daughter Marin at the time, spent that evening with Becki, marveling at Evie. Scott and I worked on the Becki’s Honda in the garage, which is to say Scott worked on Becki’s Honda while I held the flashlight so he could see what he was doing when he was repairing Becki’s car.

Eventually, Becki’s car was road-ready, as the alternator was alternating again. (That’s what they do, right?)

By this time, night had fallen over the sleepy Kansas country. For our drive home, then, we would be navigating the kind of darkness in which only seasoned spelunkers succeed. Becki, being the one in our marriage who enjoys driving, was at the wheel as usual. She pulled out of the driveway and into the labyrinthine Kansas country, headlights waging war against the darkness.

I, on the other hand, sat in the backseat with Evie, serving as the training wheels on this particular parental bicycle ride. I was there not because there was someone in the passenger seat upfront, but because Evie might cry, and I could help her if I sat right next to her. Lord knows babies cry, after all. Of course, when I searched my mind for memories of other parents who rode in the backseats with their children, I found none. But Becki and I both agreed this was wise.

As we drove blindly into the country nighttime, Becki uttered the words, “I’m not sure I know where we are.”

I was quite sure I had absolutely no idea where we were. I never paid attention to how we got from point A to point B when Becki was driving. Her radar had always rivaled that of any military operation.

“Nope, I don’t remember that road,” she continued. The yellow-brick road from The Wizard of Oz would have come in handy at the moment. We certainly would have recognized it. But it was nowhere in sight. We had a munchkin with us though, and she was about to break out into song.

When I say “song,” I am thinking of Yoko Ono’s more experimental recordings, in which she wails like a banshee. I do not particularly like these recordings, nor do I understand them. They are probably profound works of art, but whenever I hear them I think she sounds like a whale with an anxiety problem. This, of course, may be her aim.

The first weeks of Evie’s life, she sounded nothing like Yoko Ono. She was completely quiet. People kept saying to us, “You just wait. She’ll cry. She won’t always be this quiet.” At first, I thought we’d lucked out. The naysayers were clearly wrong. Evie would show them.

But that night in the car, as Becki drove down all of the wrong roads, Evie showed us.

She showed us she could cry.

We could have mounted her on top of our car and used her as a human siren if we’d needed to clear the roads of traffic in a hurry. But that was the problem. There was no traffic. No cars. No signs of human life. For all we knew, we’d exited the good part of Kansas (i.e. Lawrence) and entered the dreaded remainder of the state. You see, Lawrence is a cultural oasis in the desert that is Kansas. There are the KU Jayhawks, of course. But hip bands play shows here. And there are hills. Kansas is known for its flatness, but Lawrence has hills. It is a geographically rebellious city.

As Evie continued to torture us with her yowl, we wept and gnashed our teeth in the Outer Darkness Jesus spoke about in the Parable of the Talents.

“You’re making her cry!” I said to Becki. “How could you get us lost at a time like this?”

“I didn’t do this on purpose!”, Becki exclaimed. But she had done it on purpose. I knew better.

I began to think about how impossible it must be for parents not to fight in front of their children.

I also realized it didn’t matter that we were using “training wheels.” Sure, I was sitting in the backseat with my squalling daughter, but I was utterly useless, and not just because I had no udder with which to feed her. I am pretty sure Evie did not shed one less tear because I was sitting next to her that day.

Eventually, Becki turned left on County Road 52458 instead of County Road 54258 (or something along those lines), and we could see the ambient city light of Lawrence. Evie continued to cry, and I almost joined in out of happiness at the thought that we might actually make it home alive that night.

Looking back, my anger with Becki, which was very real at the time, was irrational through and through. She hadn’t gotten us lost on purpose, and she wasn’t even responsible for making Evie cry. The bottom line was, I simply didn’t want to see my daughter suffer. I felt awful for her because she was crying, and it was my instinct to find a scapegoat for her suffering.

We got home, cooled down, and realized how absurd it had all been. Becki had felt horrible, as if she actually had been responsible for Evie’s meltdown.

That night, I think we both realized we were destined to be atrocious parents just like every other parent who has ever lived. We were not exceptions to the rule. Our daughter was not quiet. Our training wheels had proven to be anything but guarantors of happiness and security for our daughter.

Which is why we fitted our parental bicycle with training wheels again last Monday when we went on our first date as a married couple since Evie was born in October. After five months of emphasizing the parental dimension of our marital relationship, we decided it was time to remind ourselves that we were a couple as well.

I wanted to see a movie.

Becki said if we saw a movie, our babysitters might call us and say they needed our help. “Where does this end though?” I asked. “Will we never see a movie in the theater again just because Evie might need us? Where do we draw the line, honey?”

“Just this once,” she said, “let’s not see a movie.”

So we refrained from seeing a movie. Instead, we went to dinner at one of the swankier establishments in Lawrence: Teller’s. Becki ate oven-roasted duck, and I ate potato ravioli with duck confit and bacon. I enjoyed a glass of malbec, and Becki likewise drank some red wine. We ate duck that night, and we also felt a bit like sitting ducks. We knew we were leaving our daughter in capable hands. Our neighbors Malcolm and Joyce, a sparky older couple, had volunteered to serve as surrogate grandparents for Evie, and we thought it was a splendid idea. But we refrained from seeing a movie just in case Evie became a human siren again.

We picked Evie up at 8:30 and discovered that she had, in fact, spent much of the evening crying. Again, our training wheels had been useless. We had not ensured a smooth ride for Malcolm and Joyce simply because we had not seen a movie.

I have not ridden in the backseat with Evie in a long time. Maybe this means next time we go out, we’ll get to see a movie. One can only hope.

“Chad Thomas Johnston is an author, sonuva’ preacha’ man, PhD-dropout, singer/songwriter, music producer/sonic reducer, daydreaming doodler, gorilla/guerilla publicist, cinemaddict, & pop-culture obsessive. He is represented by Seattle, WA-based literary agent Jenée Arthur, who is currently shopping his debut manuscript to major publishing houses.

Follow Him on Twitter: @Saint_Upid

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