So, I was taking one of our wonderful walks with my crying kid through this dreamy California neighborscape. Sophie had fallen and scraped her hands – something she wouldn’t even balk at had she been at the park or further away from Her. But here, and after the fateful events of ten minutes ago, she was focused, you could say, on a certain (female) person.
I doubted the morale of our trip in the first place. Ten minutes before we were leaving Her, and after Her sweet kisses and soft looks, my daughter did an award–winning impression of an eternal goodbye with tears that would make a winged Oscar Committee cry into their leather seats. Blue eyes rimmed in red, platinum hair being blown by the foul wind of her Departure with Daddy, she wailed like Winslet.
This scene went on all the way around the first bend, and all I could say to myself was, in this matter-of-fact internal voice, “Will they (the neighbors) think I am stealing her?” I could not calm her (at first, now I’m getting better at impersonating Her) but really, and with much more difficulty to admit, I could not Soothe her. I could distract her with something soothing, but I, myself, was incapable of doing more.
When I realized that fact, again, on this fateful walk, I broke out into one of those sweats that you have when you hurt yourself – like a stool-to-the shin kind of pain. After a series of back and forth questioning of myself, I came to an emotional conclusion – I wasn’t necessary. Not then at least. I mean, in some books it says something about us males being useful somewhere around age seven, and maybe around the time our daughter starts to drive, but SHEESH! I was seriously doubting my manhood. But that was also the source of my problem; I was counting on it in the first place.
No thinking, I said to myself, don’t let her think – and showed her a lizard that just peeped from behind a rock; she stopped crying immediately. We walked on in the bliss of forgetfulness, until she looked at me and said, very gravely, that she had to Pee. We stopped, and I looked at her, paused, and gauged whether or not she really had to go; it was a purely and fatally masculine pause. The moment I decided she didn’t, she actually did.
“SHEESH,” I said again, adding, “She needs her mama,” I said it out loud, as she began to pee her pants, a darkening that crept down her leg as she stared at me with a look of pure contentment. I swept her up, dragged her pants down, grabbed her, and poised her Floating Dragon Toilet Style, awkwardly, over a bit of ill-watered grass.
I waited, sweating.
Nothing. Not a drop. All drops already in the pants – the pants which took so long to get on, the pants I had petitioned for. And when that failed, I had become Lenin, pants in hand (“Let the people have pants…”) yelling at a short, small crowd. All that – just for the pants.
Here I was in the overture of a symbolic journey – losing the pants. I knew this was only the beginning. And, now the debate: Leave the pants on and be a “Negligent Parent,” or take them off and be a “Negligent Parent.” Choices, choices. In the process of removing the pants, Sophie decided that this event demanded the presence of Her, which, as I said before, is a being I cannot supply or replace. Sophie sensed this and began to wind up her hysteria machine, getting ready for The Big Wail.
I was done for – right in the middle of a quiet, mid-spring weekend morn. I would’ve cried, which could have worked, but I didn’t (being a guy), and so was again lost in a mist of being unnecessary.
I don’t know about your children, but my daughter sometimes likes to flop, in full dramatic fashion, while crying. I’ve heard many parents go through this as it seems to be a direct genetic link involving the constant consumption of Heavy Metal from sometime in the Eighties.
There she was – a result of me listening to Black Sabbath – good old summer of ’87, flopping backwards and forwards, leading with her little melon, a miniature headbanger’s ball. (She loves to do this, especially when several feet above the ground. This is always the most fun when it is in the middle of a very busy street, cars all around, and the sun blasting down on us. This is LA, baby – go big or go home.)
I was ready to go home.
Suddenly, and naturally, I was at the limit of my manhood. This was it. It was over. I saw the kid-friendly plexiglass ceiling above me stained with the greasy handprints of billions of men. No going above this one. I saw and I was terrified.
Just then, and out of the still blue sky, a blonde shape flashed to my right. This apparition – a spot of sunshine with arms and boobs and a soft neck – came swooping down and snagged the thrashing, red, crying machine out of my arms. She came, and saved us. Again.
She. Her.
She had heard her cries through the tile, wood, trees, earth and brick of this hilly neighborhood, and had come running down the street with measured, pigeon-toed steps, up to us. I felt Her, and a wave of deep relief overtook me – something I might never be able to feel on my own as Sophie fell against her chest. In one word: Irreplaceable.
Her. Mother.
This then, is less (I hope) an admission of men’s limitations, and instead a comparison of a very measurable value to the immeasurable vastness of the Matrix of the Universe, represented here, in perfect miniature, just for you. In the form of your Mother.
Here’s to all Mothers, everywhere. And don’t forget to always bring – two pairs of pants.