A Bad Mom's Summer Outing

Your toddler survives despite you.

The current situation is that the apartment is tiny and not air-conditioned, your one-and-a-half-year-old son never stops gallivanting around it, and your husband is in the fourth year of writing his dissertation. If he finishes it soon, he will be able to find steady, full-time work instead of pick-up gigs and, thus, better the family’s living standards that have relied for some time on your measly low-paying job.

The subway gives you a much needed smile.

So on most weekends this summer, you take an early-morning train to your family in Philadelphia. Your sister, more patient and experienced than you in the mom department, has three little girls who treat your son like a doll. Your brother loves to rough-house. And your parents are thrilled to have a grandson to bounce around. You will get respite, your son will have lots of attention, and your husband will (in theory) get some work done.

It’s a perfect solution to your prevailing predicament of feeling overwhelmed and afraid you are failing as a woman and a mom. You wanted this child so much, but you are so exceedingly young that you didn’t comprehend the impact it would have on your life. The arrangement is for your husband to take care of your son while you continue working and then for you to take over the nights and the weekends so he can work on that dissertation of his. You are blessed that your son is the easiest of babies, of joyful temperament and an eager sleeper. Your husband proves to be an excellent, attentive caregiver. You figure out fairly quickly how to shake off mind-numbing tiredness and to uneasily wrap your previous ambitions around the considerable contentment of motherhood.

It works. You tell yourself it works, and, to all outward appearances, it does. You even figure out how to manage your occasional emotional downturns—don’t acknowledge them and keep moving. For instance, instead of going to the neighborhood playground and library, push the carriage another mile or two to another playground, or trek four miles up a hill to the main library. You explain to yourself that these alternatives provide your child with better swings, better picture books. Botantical gardens, historical sites he won’t remember, the Coney Island sideshow are good choices. Learn to balance him on your hip while you cook, bounce him in his Jolly Jumper with your foot while attempting to write one page—just one page—of a story you’ll never finish. You laugh about all this. Everyone who asks you how you’re doing laughs about it, too. Especially women who know you are lying.

Part of you succeeds in believing you have become a capable mother to the most delightful child in the universe. But why, then, can’t you wait to throw him at anyone who will take him? It’s a conundrum no one knows you have.

On the train he climbs all over you, and the young man who sat down with you finally moves to another seat with Animal Cracker crumbs sprinkled all over him. The conductor has a bit of a time punching through your slightly chewed, damp ticket. The woman in the seat in front of you peaks back when your son leaps off your lap and hangs on her headrest. She laughs at his prowness, even gives him one of her fingers to chew. She says you’re a fabulous mother for allowing him to bang around your 35mm camera.

“Thank you,” you say.

“Enjoy this age,” she says.

You smile, so grateful for the pep talk but the slight implications you pick up from her remark is that it’s going to get harder. Your anxiety is now approching the yellow warning light stage. But your son tuckers himself out by the time the train stops at Trenton and sleeps in peace in your arms all the way to Philadelphia.

Your dad meets you and bends down to cup your son’s face in his hand, making him chuckle. You stay at your sister’s house, where her girls run out and immediately want to take your son off your hands, and he insists on letting them. Your sister and you retreat to her large kitchen to plan out the day of doing your usual sisterly running about on made-up but necessary errands. This will demonstrate one of her top parenting lessons: Jam the kids in the car, run them ragged from place to place, and eventually they’ll fall asleep.

A partial list of your family’s thoughts on your mothering skills: You are too lax with him (you’re in the hug rather than scold camp except when he wants to play with an electrical outlet). You don’t clean him up enough (you’d be doing nothing else if you wiped him every time a blop of dirt found him). You let him clamber up anything that’s vertical (you try to stop him!). Your nieces are adventuresome and mischievous but nothing on this scale. The question, then, is whether he’s hyperactive. You repeat what your pediatrician told you: He’s a boy. In fact, she considers him too laid-back and should be more active. It’s accurate to say you, your husband, and your family shudder at the thought. When his brother comes along in a few years, you understand just how laid-back your first born was.

Dinner is a raucous family affair. You and your sister try out new recipes that either you bring down from your job as a food writer or your sister has flagged in magazines. They tend to be involved and rich-tasting. There are always too many cocktails and bottles of wine. You are a boisterous, funny family, except for your mom when she drinks more than everyone else and then becomes dangerously surly. Your oldest niece is minding her sisters and your son in the living room, watching cartoons and falling asleep. The dinner extends late into the night.

Sunday, your brother suggests taking the kids to the Wissachickon Creek near the house you grew up in. You can’t think of a better way to spend the time before you have to go back home. You pretty much lived in the woods when you were a teenager and often swam the length of the creek on hot summer days like this one.

The Valley Green duck pond.

You park at Valley Green to feed the ducks, then walk along the bridal path to an old dam. Its top is flat and there is a pool before the water falls over into the lower creek. You all climb down the rocky bank and wave your hands through the cold water. Some other kids nearby have squirt guns and run around drenching each other.

Two nieces, one son, and a brother, pre-accident.

Your son, mesmerized by the squirt gun army, totters over to join them and, in the time it takes you to look down for a pebble to teach your nieces how to skip rocks, he slips into the shallow water. Your brother runs over and pulls him out by his foot. Your son dangles upside down and wails to wake the dead. Once he’s righted and in your arms, you all stare at the impressive lump pushing through his forehead.

By the time you get back to your sister’s house, the bump looks to be five feet tall and as purple as a black plum. Your parents have arrived to take you to the train station. Everyone sets in motion: Your sister deftly fashions a travel ice pack out of three baggies and a sock and, about to be late for the train, your dad throws the stroller and bag into the car. Don’t let him fall asleep, your mom says after wondering why in the hell did you let your child almost drown in the creek.

All the way home, your son clings to you. You struggle to keep him awake, but the train sways and the car is unusually quiet. You tickle him, play patty-cake, run his little Knight Rider car up, down, and around him and the seat. When you kiss his forehead beside the bump he tastes of salty sweat with a hint of the creek’s metallic flavor. You try to pull his little baseball cap down over the bump, but it doesn’t fit. Swear to God the ticket taker and everyone who passes on the train and, later, the subway, eyes your son’s forehead and thinks about calling Child Services. He dozes off and on, and so do you. Each time he wakes up, he smiles and nuzzles you. Each time you wake up you are horrified and guilty.

Your husband opens your apartment door and takes his son in his arms.

“What the fuck,” he exclaims.

You explain about the woods and the creek and the less-than-split-second you were preoccupied with your sister’s girls instead of your son.

He bends back in your husband’s arms, returns to giggles, and demands to be let down. There he goes, uncowed, off again into the wilds of his domain.

You drift into the kitchen and open the refrigerator. For whatever reason you long for a slice of the watermelon purchased before you left. You hope its lush coolness will temper your brain fever. You take it out, only to discover your old unreliable refrigerator has frozen it, the green rind almost translucent and the flesh fringed with icy flecks.

“You want a drink?” your husband says.

He brings down the bottle of gin while you cut a chunk of the watermelon into cubes. You pile them into a little bowl and, to your husband’s astonishment, pour a good measure of gin over them. You lie in your bed in the alcove off the living room and slowly sip the frozen watermelon and gin. The empty bowl balances on the overturned box you use for a night table, and you fall asleep to the mirth of your husband and son surrounding you with forgiveness.

Nothing new but more delicious when unexpected.