My husband has compared the experience of having a passel of young children to that of a wildebeest being dragged down by hyenas. This strikes me as an understatement.
A speedy wildebeest can outrun a pack of predators, or hide from them, or feint in a frantic zigzag until its attackers lose interest and seize some less fleet-footed prey. A parent, on the other hand, is for 18 years vulnerable to ambush at all hours, from all sides.
A parent must become skilled at sensing the predator and reading its intentions before it pounces. So, for example, an experienced father will, without looking, automatically brace his spine a split-second before his son leaps from the second-floor landing at his unprotected back. A wily mother knows that if she kneels on the floor to play horsie with the youngest child, she must expect all the children to pile on, no matter how brute their force, spiny their limbs, or how large and gangly they have grown. It’s not fatal, like an encounter with hyenas, but it comes close.
At any minute, any child may overturn a glass of milk on the carpet, knock over a chair, knock over a sibling, burst into tears, burst a blister, unlock a bunny cage, unlock the front door, play “wedding” with the basmati rice, or play “beach” with the powdered laundry detergent. The daily vigilance required to prevent or mitigate normal household disasters can, over time, make a parent jumpy.
So imagine, if you will, two married wildebeest who after ten years of the old tooth-and-claw are transported to an exotic new environment, a palm-dotted place devoid of predators. If they are anything like my husband and me, they emerge from the airplane blinking, wondering at the strange tranquility around them, the unprecedented lack of interruption. As they wait for their suitcases, they can be seen still twitching with vestigial reflexes that warn them to keep small children off the baggage carousel. They chuckle, hardly believing that hundreds of miles of open ocean now separate them from their children.
Our wildebeest cannot relax, not yet. Their conversation is jerky and strange, featuring banalities such as, “So. Wow. Here we are.” They must douse the urge to make peanut-butter sandwiches and cut the crusts off.
It takes 24 hours before the Darwinian effects are manifest. With no lunchboxes to pack, no sippy cups to fill, no carpool to drive, no milk-teeth-brushing, vacuuming, spill-wiping, homework-supervising, deadlines, or commuting, no crazed wrestling on the nursery floor and no desperate searches for lost sneakers, these skirmish-hardened veterans start to go soft.
They experience calm hours that stretch forth without any expectation of anyone needing anything from them. They whack tennis balls. They swim in turquoise lagoons. They chat comfortably over rum drinks and eat deep-fried calamari of unexampled tenderness. They become, in short, like the dodo.
Plump, slow, and with no natural predators on the island fastness of Mauritius, dodos gradually lost the ability to fly, and were thus mortally unprepared for the reintroduction of–
Mummy and Daddy!”–the shrieks perforate three floors as we wildebeest-turned-dodos click our key into the front door lock after four endless days away.
“Did you have fun?”
“Did you bring us presents?”
“What’s–”
“Mummy!”
“Presents!”
“–in that–”
“We missed you!”
“Daddy!”
“–box?”
The din is fantastic. Warm bodies fling themselves happily at us, small hands pull at our arms, yank our necks, rummage in our pockets. It is lovely, of course, yet I catch sight of us in the hall mirror and see with dismay that we already have a hunted look. On the stairs, as on a pedestal above the milling forum, Granny stands with alabaster serenity.
“We had a marvelous time,” she says firmly, “Didn’t we?”
There is a bit of yelling to indicate, yes, they did, at which point Molly pulls me down and whispers mutinously, “Granny runs the household rather differently than you do.”
From what I can make out, in our absence Granny von Trapp has run a jolly boot camp where young recruits dined early, had their fingernails trimmed with barracks efficiency, and were tucked into bed by an iron fist in a velvet glove. Ice cream has clearly been a motivational tool; baked goods have evidently played a part, as well. Ransacking the kitchen shelves to find dinner materials, I note that almost nothing remains of the hundredweight of cookies I bought before we left. I note several newer packages of brownies and lollipops.
“Certainly not,” Granny counters, offended, “I hardly had to resort to bribery at all.”
Later that night, this spectacular and selfless relative, who herself raised one child, and who, like most grandparents, is eager to impart helpful child-rearing “suggestions,” makes a remarkable statement.
“Now,” she says, after four days with four children, “I understand.”