Learning to Cry

by Christopher C. Payne

  This meant I was on baby duty from the time I came home from work and 24-hours-a-day on the weekend. My in-laws stayed with us for a few months, and her mother was wonderful around the house -- preparing meals, doing laundry, picking up, and watching the baby during the day. Her father was helpful, as well, but in other ways. He tended to need assistance as often as he dolled it out, though. I think it came from her mother spoiling him for several years. But he was a wonder with projects. Damn, he could fix things and was always running errands to get things we had to have at the time.

  My parents made the obligatory visit, but taking care of children is not really their bailiwick. They are more the working types, and family was not always the highest priority. Most people often comment upon meeting them how they are not as affectionate as the majority of families. It doesn’t matter to whom they’re being compared. I don’t come from a family of huggers, I guess. Not sure where I got my genes, but I sure did love hugging Melissa.

  I connected with her in the initial weeks and months. I got up to feed her or bring her to her mother to be bottle fed. Breastfeeding had not been an option even considered, so we were on bottle duty around the clock.

  Cheryl enjoyed feeding Melissa, but in the beginning it was difficult for her to move. Looking back on those first few weeks, it was a special time for me. I have always felt that Cheryl held substantial regret surrounding her lack of involvement. She talks about missing out in the beginning and blames that period in time on why my oldest daughter and I are so connected. That connection has led us down both a good and a bad path, I should note. I wouldn’t change anything about our time together in the beginning, but I do wonder what the first few months of a child’s entrance into the world means long term.

  I will not say that Melissa was perfect in the first few years of her life, but she was pretty damn close. I still remember walking in Wal-Mart one day as the three of us were shopping for some household products. There was a woman who had a little baby screaming at the top of her lungs in her cart. I stood watching, wondering how she could be such a bad parent. What was she doing so wrong that she couldn’t keep her baby appeased enough to stop the tantrum? Melissa never acted up in public.

  We knew friends of ours that had stopped going to restaurants when they had their first child. Their social lives seemed to abruptly cease. We, on the other hand, took Melissa with us everywhere. At the time she was born they had just come out with the newest car seat that would sit directly into a little stroller frame. You just had to unbuckle the seat from the car, drop it in the frame, and walk away. Melissa loved not having to be moved, and her seat was so comfortable. She would sit for hours at a restaurant, looking around, taking in the surroundings.

  People would constantly come over and tell us what a good baby we had. She seemed to never act up for any lengthy period. When she began crawling and walking, we had a few episodes that were relatively mild. She drew on a wall with some magic markers one day. We explained to her this was wrong and she, after the third time, finally ended up in trouble. She didn’t do it after that. She was just testing the boundaries which, again, seemed natural.

  She did have an issue with stairs, though. We had a flight of stairs in our house and a landing two steps up from the bottom. She tumbled down the stairs at least three times. We would hear this loud thumping sound as she flopped from one stair to the next, bouncing back and forth between the railing and the wall. The slow motion affect remained the same each time as both Cheryl and I would jump up, only to reach the designated landing spot as Melissa came to rest. There was always that delayed reaction as she rocked to a stopping point before she began wailing at the top of her lungs.

  I have to give her that one, though. I assume if I rolled down a flight of stairs I might be a little worse for wear, as well. Damn, at my age, I am not even sure I would get up and start walking ever again. My bones are brittle for an old man, and I am not even that old, yet. I might joke about 43 being old, but in reality I still hope to have a lot of life yet, even if it is a life of misery. At the time Melissa was born I was only 27. It seems so young now to think I had a child then. Who would have ever thought?

  Once, while sitting at the kitchen table, I remember seeing water begin to flow in a slow trickle form our ceiling fan. It built up momentum and turned into a steady flowing stream within seconds. I rushed upstairs to find Melissa standing over the toilet with two inches of water engulfing her feet, consuming the bathroom floor. Apparently, she had stuffed a full roll of toilet paper into the toilet to see what might happen. As luck would have it, the stopper was also broken, so the water simply kept running.

  Despite the water damage, I couldn’t muster the energy for ripping out the drywall on the ceiling and fixing it the right way. I dabbed drywall mud on it periodically, attempting to patch the hole the accident caused, but it was so soft and spongy it never set correctly. When we sold the house that was the first thing people asked about. I told the story over and over again to my realtor, the buyer’s realtor, family members, friends, etc. It became quite the topic of discussion because it was so noticeable. I guess I should have taken the time to fix it, but it always seemed like such a cute reminder of “the flooding incident.” My guess is most families have a similar story.

  That same ceiling fan was also the nucleus of my anxiety. Like most fathers, I enjoyed throwing Melissa up in the air and catching her in my arms. It was a game we used to play, and she loved it from the first time she could hold her head up. One time I was playing with her, she was giggling, and we were all consumed with each other. I picked her up, tossed her in the air, forgetting where I stood. Her head flew right in the middle of the ceiling fan, missing it by less than an inch. My heart jumped into my throat, and it was everything I could do not to panic. From that point on I was extremely careful to look up before we ever played the game again.

  The most exciting event in Melissa’s first three years came right before she had her third birthday. Her little sister was born on March 4, 1997. All I can say about Amelia’s birth was how completely standard the entire process was. For all the emotional upheaval we went through with Melissa, Amelia was the exact opposite. Vaginal births after C-sections were not a common occurrence, but our doctor at the time saw no reason not to try it. Medical opinion still varies on this, but Cheryl was excited at the thought of having a vaginal birth, so we went for it. . Amelia went full term, came in on time with her due date, didn’t cause any issues, and we were in and out of the hospital with no bumps or bruises.

  The second child is an interesting concept. It doesn’t hold the uncertainty the first child does. You have a little experience under your belt, and you are not surprised quite as often. The biggest difference with Amelia was discovering we were not the perfect parents we once thought we were. The lady in Wal-Mart a couple of years back quickly became our role model. As easy as Amelia was coming into this world, she proved difficult from day one. She cried and screamed, couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be held and so on and so on.

  Our calm days at the restaurants were a thing of the past, and we now fully understood what it meant to be tied down to the house. Not that we were complaining, mind you. It was incredible to have another girl in our quickly growing family. No matter how much I complained about Amelia in the beginning, she was still a girl. Having girls was so much easier than taking care of a boy. Our friends would bring boys over to our house, and I just didn’t get it. Are all boys insanely energetic?

  How the hell can you let your sons run, jump, throw, move non-stop? Do boys just not like coloring? Do they not enjoy sitting and playing dolls? What happened to the game of serving tea and biscuits? My daughters might not be perfect, but they are still girls and, as such, were so much calmer to have around the house. It was amazing. Everyone at the time gave me the same warning. Those experienced parents who had lasted longer than a few years and knew the full spectrum of what I had in store all said the same thing. Boys might be more difficult in
the beginning, but girls will make you pay when they get older. Just wait.

  Damn, if I would only have listened I might have been a little more prepared.

  Within 18 months of Amelia’s birth, we decided to uproot our blossoming family and head out to California. My sister-in-law lived there, and we fell in love with the area during our many vacations there. Cheryl had gotten a job, and they had offered to pay the moving expenses. Surprisingly, my company at the time had decided to transfer me to the Bay Area office, as well. It was all working out perfectly. Cheryl left early for California and found us a little townhouse to rent. We easily sold our house in Illinois, and I gathered up the girls and our cat and headed to the airport.

  I now wonder if my trip to the West Coast was any indication of what our new life had in store. I had a friend drop me off. With a 4-year-old, a 1-year-old, a cat and tons of luggage, I attempted to navigate my way to our boarding gate. I remember thinking how lucky I was to have made it inside before a big storm hit. . I didn’t think the plane could be delayed. We sat on the floor for hours as the airline announced repeated delays until finally they canceled the flight altogether.

  I, then, had to stand in line, get the cat from storage, and get transported to our hotel for the evening. Amelia ran around the hotel lobby as we checked in, wearing a diaper that weighed more than she did. It was so saturated that liquid was seeping out all over her clothes. Picking her up, with bodily discharge oozing from all sides of her bottom, gave the illusion that I’d been caught in the rainstorm. I hadn’t brought enough diapers in the bag to get me through eight hours of waiting time.

  After we got in the room, found everyone a change of clothes and new diapers, we fell asleep quickly. We headed out early the next morning and thank God, United had actually bumped us up to first class. I still wish I could thank the airline employee who helped us the night before. I think she must have seen the tears welling up as I attempted to coral my children and animals and carry everything all at the same time. Thank God I was so young. I am not sure I could now handle that stress at my age.

  We moved into our tiny little townhouse and spent weekends and evenings looking around for a home to buy. As always, Melissa and I watched movies together, with Anaconda being one of my favorites. Despite warnings, I allowed Melissa to watch scary movies with me, letting her judge what she could handle and what was too much. In the middle of Anaconda, right after the snake ate a man whole, she turned to me and said, “Daddy, this movie might be a little much for me.” With that, she got up from the couch and headed upstairs. Who was this little girl?

  We found a house over on the coast in the little town of El Granada within a few short months. It was just up the road from Half Moon Bay where my sister-in-law lived with her family. The house was an interesting design as most houses are in the Bay Area. It is a far cry from the planned subdivisions built all over the corn fields surrounding Chicago. People build houses on any piece of land they can find and figure out a way to make the house fit. Stairs are plentiful, so you are forced to get used to them. The house was on the side of a hill and had no real yard but it did have a lower level that was partially finished. To the kids’ amusement, there was a huge stage built right in.

  If there is anything girls enjoy doing, it is performing. The stage was a big selling point, and even though the house had only three bedrooms, it was still about 2,200 square feet. It fit us perfectly. At the time we purchased the house, the plan was to live there until we retired and, then, move on. The stairs alone would kill an old man, and with my history, it wouldn’t take me long to feel the pain from my military days. I was in the Army National Guard for several years, strolling up and down hills carrying an 80-pound back pack. It takes its toll.

  As the next few years passed, I noticed friction growing between Cheryl and me that escalated beyond our normal everyday routine. We had never been a calm household due to her forceful demeanor and my refusal to compromise. It was not an easy mix. I still don’t know whether we passed this along to our daughters, but Melissa and Amelia never did bond in quite the way I had imagined sisters would. There were more confrontational episodes than I would have hoped. On a day-to-day basis, they were constantly competing versus lending a helping hand.

  With both of us getting older, the discussion of a third child came into play, and before you knew it we were pregnant again. Seeing as how our house was not conveniently set up for a five-member family we looked around and discovered an opportunity only a few blocks away that was within our price range. The kids were willing to make the jump because it had one of the few in-ground swimming pools in the area. What kid doesn’t like to swim?

  Melissa was still a little reluctant, even with the promise of swimming pool birthday parties. In retrospect, that should have thrown up a red flag. I now realize that stability for her is paramount. She has an appearance of outward strength, but inwardly she is more vulnerable than you might imagine. As with most kids, she really didn’t have a choice, and on Nov. 5 we moved into our new house, and on Nov. 8, Cassandra was born. Daughter number three. I was either going to be the best taken care of father in the world or my life would be more tumultuous than I could ever possibly imagine. I wondered which would be the case.

  As with Amelia, Cassandra’s birth went very smoothly. It was a natural birth that went relatively quickly, and we now officially had our first-born California girl. Our two oldest might adjust easily enough since they moved to California at such a young age, but Cassandra was official. Big issues for our family soon followed, though.

  Cheryl’s parents kept the girls while we were at the hospital and brought them to see Cassandra the day after she was born. She had spent a lot of time with both girls explaining the birthing process and how things worked, trying to ease our new addition into the family mix. Amelia and her mother were very close, and when she entered the hospital room she erupted with a hysterical burst of tears. I think seeing her mother in a hospital bed, not looking her normal self was a little too much for Amelia to handle. When she finally did settle down, we were all surprised to hear her scream out, at the top of her lungs, “Where is the vagina?!”

  There had been all of those hours, walking the girls through what giving birth meant. In those discussions, the word vagina had been used. Apparently, Amelia had taken to the word, and for 10 minutes she was walking around the hospital room, trying to understand where the vagina might be. She saw the baby. She understood that part, but she really wanted to see this vagina that had allowed the baby to enter the world.

  The grandparents were not quite as open in their thought process, and they did their best to ignore Amelia. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop laughing as nurses and doctors would pass by wondering what the hell was going on as this little girl continued to scream, “Where is the vagina?!” It reminded me of the old woman who couldn’t figure out where the beef was in those old Wendy’s commercials. I wonder if that old lady ever did find her meat?

  With our family now complete you might have thought we were well on our way to being settled. We had our large home sitting toward the top of the hill. It had a swimming pool. We both had nice jobs. We had three beautiful daughters, and family was close by to help out, as needed. With the addition of our third daughter, we had taken on a nanny from Poland who lived with us, and life was sailing along.

  It always makes me wonder what happens within a home. Our family had all the outward appearances of being content and happy, yet we were nothing more than a shell of what a family should really be. Cheryl and I were growing more and more distant. Our relationship, which had been rocky, was getting more so every single day. The kids, who we loved, were growing older, and as kids do, there were more demands placed on the family as a whole. Our nanny who was wonderful, added a new personality to the mix, and it all meshed together to form a level of unhappiness.

  Something was missing. It just wasn’t right. Melissa was now 8 years old, Amelia was 5 and Cassandra was just starting out, l
iving in the only home she had ever known. I wonder how success is measured from an outward appearance versus reality. I now know how I measure success, and it is solely based on reality, but what price do you pay to get there? Do you have to trudge through the muddy alligator-infested waters to reach your goal? Isn’t there a bridge that somebody could build to make the path easier to navigate?

  We would soon find out it was not only the adults who were feeling at odds with this fabricated façade. Our kids were beginning to show us they too were not really in tune with life, happiness, and the American Dream.

  Melissa especially was already well on her way down a path of sadness. If I knew then what I know now, would I have been able to affect her enough to push her in another direction? We can all second guess our choices, but what does that do for our future? I look at all three of my daughters, and all I ever wanted was their happiness. Now I wonder if it was not me that was the cause of their pain.

  What do parents do again? Do we strive to give our children the best life they can possible live?

  How many parents fail?

  What is failure?

  Who decides? Who is the one judging?

  Would we have been better off if I had simply allowed things to meander forward? I sit staring at my four walls and wonder how I arrived here. What turns in life could have prevented this hell that I now called home. I wonder where my daughters are today.

  Dishonesty, does it come naturally to some people?