I finally put Charlie to bed for his nap. I've heard rumors that someday he'll stop taking a nap. That means I'll have to stop it too. He used to take two naps a day. He would take roughly a two hour nap at 10am and then another one at 4pm. He's down to one now. He has been for six months. His naps are getting backed up. We had been on a 11am to 2pm nap routine pretty consistently for a couple months. Then he got all screwed up when he stayed with Gigi and Papa. I don't blame them too bad. They don't know how to tire him out like I do. I can manage him pretty well. Being a stay at home dad is really being part manager, part father. When it starts getting close to nap time, I check his vitals. If he's lying on the floor with Silky, I know we're good. If he is standing up in his stroller dancing to my cell phone ring, like he was today, intervention is needed.
I am isolated from the stay at home mother demographic. Our world is small. I am not invited to play groups. My kind is never seen in a group larger than one. We are not members of the sweatpant stroller brigade in the park. Though we are in the park, we push our strollers alone. No one blows a whistle at me. I set my own pace when I run. I do not stop and do lunges using my stroller to balance. I am slightly jealous of their community. Not just for me, but for Charlie. I want him to have friends.
I know we exist. We just don't have the network. I take Charlie to the mall every so often. The mall is my nightmare. It hit me one day that it is just a big warehouse filled with stores. I have loathed shopping all my life. If I have a need for something, which is rare, I find which store has the necessity, locate the store on the map, get in, buy good, and then get out. It's like robbing a bank. No need to waste time. I have painful memories of trying dickeys and plaid slacks on in the JC Penny fitting rooms with my Mom and Grandma.
The worst thing about malls are the walkway vendors. You know the people manning the little huts that don't really have a home in the center of the main boulevards. Charlie is thrown back against his stroller seat when I accelerate past these bauble hawkers. They are always foreign too it seems. They are the ones who sell the wind catchers, the alien paraphernalia, the acne cream, the hand lotion, the weight loss tea, and the hair extensions. They want you to try, taste, drink, smell, look, gaze, buy, buy, buy. I also eschew the Asian cuisine counters in the sprawling food court. They are aggressive about handing out free toothpick skewered samples.
"Excuse me. Excuse me, sir!" Charlie's curls straighten in the wind. I avoid eye contact with them like I do homeless people. Charlie smiles at them. He doesn't know yet. He trusts everyone. He wants to feed everyone goldfish crackers. He has not gotten sick from their samples.
I was sitting on a bench last night downtown after having a belated anniversary dinner with Jill. Seven years together. I was smoking a five dollar cigar, wearing the yellow authentic Tommy Bahama shirt Jill bought me for Father's Day. Another reason I don't need to shop is that my wife does it for me. Lights were strung across the street from top of building to top of building. The kind of strip lighting that we had in our Chevy conversion van that my dad bought just to drive us on our only family vacation to Myrtle Beach, SC. I was in the eighth grade. Okay, I told my friends we were going to Myrtle Beach. It sounded cooler than Ocean Isle, "The uncrowded alternative."
The sky beyond the lights was a deep blue. I think it's called cerulean. It was cloudless. I waited for Jill. Charlie was with his grandma, Gigi at home. A man approached my bench. He carried two leftover boxes from a restaurant down the street.
He nervously cleared his throat. "Sir, could you spare a dollar? I am flat broke."
In my wallet, I had two five dollar bills, one Yuan note and a five Yuan note that I have been carrying ever since we came back from China when Jill was five months pregnant with Charlie. For nearing a year, I haven't earned a dime or a Yuan. The ten dollars is money for babysitters. I can buy two hours of childcare for ten dollars from a fourteen year old girl. Yes, she makes more than I do. Her cell phone is better than mine too. She lets Charlie play with it. I don't know her cell phone capabilities. But it has a touch screen that Charlie likes. Mine is new. My old phone was stolen. Whoever stole it used it to make several calls. I dialed most of them. I told them all if they knew who stole it, they could turn it in, no questions asked. I never got it back. My new phone has regular buttons. Charlie can say 'button'. I am worried about his babysitter knowing CPR. What does someone her age really know about anything? I got my first pit hair when I was her age. I was worried about that too. Actually, when I first noticed, there were three hairs. I don't know which one was the first. Maybe they grow in clumps like river birch.
I'm a little jealous of traditional wage earners and it seems now of beggars. I opened a letter today from my Grandma Lucy. Two, one dollar bills fell out of it. I got excited. I think I started to salivate. I got disappointed. The note inside said they were for Charlie. I folded them up and slipped them into his piggy bank. It is heavy. It is heavy despite the fact that I had to borrow some of it a couple of weeks ago. The money was used to benefit Charlie, but I don't feel good about it. I'll replace it when I get paid hard cash for watching my child. I used to steal Eisenhower fifty cent pieces from my dad and buy candy at the pharmacy down the street. My guilt is stoked.
Jill doesn't lord it over me, the fact that I'm not earning money. Only when she wants to push a button. Usually she's pretty humble about it. We are blessed to make this arrangement work. Men who don't stay at home with their children should treat their spouses who do with deep respect and love.
I wanted to explain all this to the beggar, but I didn't. It kind of made me feel rich to be asked for money. That's mainly why people want money anyway, right? So other people think they have it. I told the guy I didn't have any cash rather than shame myself. I should have told him how much babysitters make. Everyone needs a good babysitter. Plus someone his age would get at least ten an hour. We were paying a mid twenty year old twelve an hour. Twelve an hour to play with my son? The new girl lives down the street. I figure we're getting her mom too if we need her.
***Update. Since writing this we gave Charlie's sitter a raise. She now makes six dollars per hour more than I do.
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