Pressdog.com

Solo Parent

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 02/23/99)

I reacted about the same way I would to hearing, "The commies just conquered Nebraska." No, I take that back. I'd react to that with fear, indignation, outrage and locking and loading, pretty much in that order. "Then we'll meet them at the border," I'd say in my best Eastwoodian hiss, "and I reckon they won't enjoy their visit."

No. What I faced on Sunday (Feb. 21) frightened me more than any communist invasion. Even scarier than a $20 stock price drop. Instead I came face to face with The Shoe Question.

My eldest and first in line for the empire, Hurricane Haley, proposed wearing white shoes to church. My eyes flared in horror as I tried to remember the White Shoe Rule. I knew the rule banned white shoes from some period that either ended or started on Labor Day. Or was that purses? I scanned my recent memory of female feet at church. Seemed like a collectively dark hue. Lots of dark pumps and flats. Mostly closed toes these days. The occasional sling-back.

Normally I'd let my wife, Rhonda, handle any female Shoe Question, but at that moment she was somewhere in Michigan. She gave me a big kiss on the morning of Feb. 17 and gleefully danced out to the van and headed east by northeast toward MI for a cousin's wedding. Suddenly the tiny, innocuous shoe concern felt like just the tip of a whole spear of parental inadequacy imbedded between my scapulas.

As a parent (and in many other ways) I'm toast without my wife. Cooked. Junk. Hosed. A pile of steaming chunks of meat. Five days after she bolted, I sat in Haley's room, alone on the front lines of parenthood, peering into her questioning little face. No one to turn to, nowhere to hide. Not enough time to go online and find out. Too proud to call my sister or a female friend. My pathetic fashion sense threatened to bring footwear shame on my daughter. (After Rhonda returned, I learned we narrowly avoided tragedy when Haley refused to even wear the white shoes. We switched ensembles to something featuring black shoes. I felt the breeze of that passing bullet.)

So get up right now, locate the nearest single parent, walk over and give him or her a certificate good for a night of baby-sitting. I have walked ever so briefly in his or her shoes and, frankly, they're more painful than pumps at the corporate Christmas Party. And everyone who spends something around 65 hours a week at the office, pinning your spouse at home with the kids, pretending your work is even one-quarter as mentally and physically demanding or important as your spouse's childcare duties, please stretch out on the couch and breath into a bag. You're not thinking right. Immediately arrange for your parenthood partner to take some random night or Saturday off. Hey, you might just have to give up watching the game on TV in order to hang with the kids at playland. Suck it up.

It only took five days for me to go from confident father to most weepy and appreciative husband. I was so en fuego at Rhonda's approaching return that I cleaned the entire house on Sunday. I vacuumed. I cleaned toilets -- while a hockey game was actually on. I folded towels at 5 a.m. I bathed children. I cleaned up guinea pig guano, all with tears of thanksgiving in my eyes.

Because, alone, your kids have you where they want you. They know you have no backup. The kids know the second parental unit gunship won't appear to lay down spousal supressing fire just as they storm the wire. So they settle in for a war of attrition. Laying siege with questions that start with "Daaaaaaaaaaaad, . . "

Unless you grow the determination of the most squared-away Marine drill instructor you'll allow pop and candy for breakfast before you know what hit you. You'll permit a dinner of cake, a glob of peanut butter and Hershey bar in return for 10 minutes to yourself before 11 p.m.

And, once they have you on the run, the kids show all the mercy of a pack of hungry spotted hyenas, minus the laughter. I appreciated my wife as co-parent a lot before the trip. Her absence just rammed home the billion ways we rely on each other to keep the kids healthy and the house upright. After her return in a snowstorm Monday, my attitude approaches worship.

And my previously healthy respect for single parents has also grown to near-religious proportions. They are parenting warriors who defy physical laws and smirk at human fatigue. Even if I doubled my parental toughness, I'd still only be about half worthy. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go clean the toilets and take the kids to playland. (I'll tape the game.)

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