Bad Dad / Heroic Mom

Everything can change in a couple of hours.

Hello, Parenting is a Joke listeners and readers! I meant to sit down and whip off a quick hey we’ll be back in a couple of weeks note, but then I started writing and decided to share a scene from my apartment on Christmas Eve day. We have a great podcast episode this week, too – it’s a bite-sized one that is 100% kid-friendly, as we asked kids what they would like to hear on a holiday podcast. They answered, and we delivered! I hope it brings you 15+ minutes of joy and a little time to yourself while they are intently listening. You can check it out HERE.

So….It was December 24^th – Christmas Eve day. Four days earlier, I purchased tickets to go ice skating with my son under the Brooklyn Bridge. That morning, I was woken up at 5 am not by my kid flinging himself onto my sleeping body, but rather by him perched right outside my bedroom door moaning. Just moaning. My husband sleeps with his airpods in (Smartly? Strategically?) so he doesn’t hear much, but I usually wake up to the sounds of stirring in the living room. This was different. This was the definition of a cry for help.

I crawled out of bed to see what the situation was and found my poor son writhing in pain on the sofa, complaining that his stomach was killing him. Now, he is dramatic, but he’s not one to complain about his tummy very often, so I took it seriously, although I didn’t quite know what to do. I got him a glass of water, told him it would be okay, and sat with him on the couch. A few hours later, when he refused breakfast, another rarity, and I thought, Oh god, are we going to urgent care on Christmas Eve? We gave him some saltines, fruit-punch-flavored Gatorade, and his iPad and the complaints pretty much stopped. I felt relieved and a little suspicious.

When I brought up if he was well enough to go skating, he whined that he was afraid that he’d throw up all over the ice. Wow. I couldn’t stop picturing it – I mean, I’m sure it’s happened before – this is New York, after all; everything has already happened. Plus, they always set up a bar near these rinks selling disgusting holiday cocktails made of run and crème de menthe, a Candy Cantini that would definitely result in me yacking peppermint-laced puke all over the rink. And then what do they do? Bring out a shovel? Put a special attachment on the Zamboni? Close the whole thing down for the rest of the day? Should I seize this opportunity to find out and force my nauseous kid to put on skates?

No, of course not… but I am still curious…

Because every business is now a conglomerate owned by an association, run by a group, and managed by AI, there was no way for me to change or get a refund for my tickets other than writing a meaningless customer service message with my complaint that would be replied to in 7-10 business days (so mid-January). I would just have to kiss my $55 goodbye.

My husband sat on his laptop; I scurried around the apartment doing busy work while our kid ran back and forth to the toilet. He was not throwing up, but he was definitely not well, yet still in great spirits, thanks to Dr. iPad. After another hour of watching my son and husband happily staring at their screens, I reflected upon the last year and came up with a conclusion: there is no point in two parents staring at one kid if that one child is on an iPad and doesn’t need anything specific. So I said to my husband – “I’m going skating. Keep giving him saltines, Gatorade, and water, and I’ll see you in a couple of hours!”

And I left.

I’ve never learned the art of making a decision and feeling zero guilt. Before I had a kid, I worried that because I never felt that maternal urge most women talk about, I would be a bad mother. As soon as my son came into my life, I was flooded with these new emotions that I have no original words to describe, so I’ll go with the same overused ones: extreme love mixed with the extreme desire to protect, want to help, cure, make better, coddle, catch, and always be there. But I was still me, and I still wanted my life; I wanted to work and build on my career, knowing that it required time and focus and often not physically being there. I happen to have a partner who has flexibility in his job and is around, so I worked out a life around that.

This fall, something broke in me during that 6-week comedy tour. After every single show, I’d be asked how my kid was doing, yet they wouldn’t say anything other than “Good show!” to the other comic, a dad whose child was the same age as mine. All of this to say, as I was bussing down to the rink, leaving my pukey child at home, I wondered, am I doing this all wrong?

While checking in at the rink, I explained to the woman that my kid was not feeling well and couldn’t use his ticket, so I’d love to get a refund or credit to use another day. She said she’d try to help me and then asked, “Are you the mother?” I said yes. “And this is your kid at home who’s sick?” Again I said yes. “But you are here to skate.” Oh boy. Yes. “Who is with your kid?” “His dad”, I replied, getting impatient at the direction of the interaction. Would she be asking this if I were a man? She’d probably judge that man for being a bad dad, but then what does this make me? But instead of laying a guilt trip on me, she gave me a big smile, a high-five, and said, “Good for you, mama! Enjoy yourself” Wow. Bad Dad but Heroic Mom.

The skating was pretty great, but while I was gone, our son threw up, just not in the bathroom, in the middle of the living room rug, and over the Apple TV remote. And because of the Gatorade, his throw-up was bright fruit-punch red. I got the text and hurried home. When I walked in the door, my son said he was feeling “100% better!” and my husband glared at me from the living room floor, on his hands and knees, where he had been scrubbing a patch on the rug. He looked exhausted, but he did a great job – it was hardly noticeable. I missed the whole thing in just 2 hours. I felt guilty, but also a little high, like I got away with something. Also, I didn’t know my husband could clean that well. He took care of it all. He’s a Great dad. And I think he needed to know he did a great job. A few times. A few more than I offered initially.

So that is my 2024 wish for all of us: may we all leave the house for a couple of hours and return to a healthy kid and a clean rug.

By the way - the Apple Remote didn’t make it.

Also, I took my son skating the day the next day, and he loved it. We stayed for 4 hours.

I’m doing another pro-parent move, and we’re traveling this weekend and will be back right after the New Year, so I won’t be here on the substack next week, but then we’ll be back. Enjoy this week’s Parenting is a Joke podcast By the Kids, For the Kids (15+ minutes of joy for the whole family), and next week it’s a favorite, with host of Standup with Pete!, comedian Pete Dominick, plus a bonus catch up with him about his 2023 and projections for 2024. We’ll be back in January with new episodes with Sara Dean from the popular podcast The Shameless Mom Academy, comedian and host Tom Papa, and so much more.