Parenting in New York City is not for the faint of heart. Sure, there are conveniences that come with city parenting, and I ponder these frequently when I need a pick-me-up: Cheap takeout! Twenty-four-hour corner delis! Elevators in buildings! But the list of parenting tasks which are extra complicated or onerous or aggravating is long. Next year, for instance, I’ll have three kids in three different schools, making morning drop-off an epic expedition that would chill the blood of most suburbanites.
The upside of this is that city parents tend to develop grit. You don’t just give up when you encounter an obstacle, because if you did, you’d never leave your (tiny) apartment.
I’ve always been a tenacious kind of person, and parenting has only strengthened this personality trait. For the most part, the tenacity’s an asset. Occasionally, though, it’s a liability. Sometimes my single-minded, stubborn determination backfires on me. Such as was the case with our last apple-picking adventure.
My parents used to take my sisters and I apple-picking every year, and it’s something David and I have been doing even before we had kids. Every October, we drive an hour north to our preferred orchard, and every time, we come home with a big bag of apples which we then make into an apple pie. It’s a tradition. I’ve loved this tradition even before I read a bunch of very persuasive articles about the tremendous value of ritual in family life, which led me to believe that doing specific stuff as a family on a regular basis is the most important defense for my kids against a later ills including but not limited to drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, truancy, imprisonment, depression, and general calamity. Consequently, my family now observes an annual Fourth of July Rocket Launch, a Day-Before-School-Starts Retro-Movie Night, Charades Fridays, and Sloppy Joe Mondays, to name a few. But apple picking is one of our oldest traditions, one we unanimously enjoy.
My son, affectionately known in these parts as Primo, age nine, is Quality Control. He has never and will never eat an apple, or any other kind of fruit, but that doesn’t stop him from demanding excellence insofar as the harvest is concerned. He has a keen eye, spots the best apples, and makes sure they land, un-bruised and impeccable, in the bag.
My daughter Seconda, age seven, is the Taster. She eats enough apples while picking to justify the high price of the bag we leave with.
My baby, Terza, age two, is the Poster Girl. Her job is to be picturesque and adorable and she executes this with aplomb.
Last year, we had an extra busy October and couldn’t get to the orchard until the end of the month. When the appointed Saturday came, Terza developed a double ear infection with accompanying fever. A course of antibiotics was started and by the next morning, the fever was gone.
“So,” I said to David early that Sunday, “Do you think we should try to go apple picking today?”
“Well, her fever’s gone,” he observed.
“And it’s only an ear infection.”
“And she’s running around playing.”
“She’ll have fun.”
“She’ll sleep in the car.”
“We’ll bring Tylenol.”
Like me, David is indomitable. He is the guy who chisels the tunnel out of prison. There is no stopping him.
“Who wants to go apple picking?” we asked the kids.
“Me!” they cried in rare, wonderful unison. Thus, it was resolved: to the orchard!
But as soon as we strapped Terza into her car seat, the day took a turn for the worse. By which I mean, the screaming commenced.
It was difficult to trace the origin of the screaming, since she frequently bellows when strapped in her car seat. So we were confident she’d settle down. Besides, we couldn’t abort mission after all the effort it took to load the kids in the car.
Corralling three children into a car for a day-long excursion takes roughly the planning and energy required for a space shuttle launch. The packing of the diaper bag with snacks, wipes, toys. The making sure everyone goes to the bathroom. The finding of the shoes. The breaking-up of sibling fights when shoes can not be found and foul play is suspected. The impossible latching of seat belts buried deep under the over-crowded boosters in the backseat. The going back in the apartment to retrieve forgotten items. Once you do all this, there is no turning back. Certainly not for a little crying which frankly, just comes with toddler territory.
But on this particular day, it wasn’t just a little crying we ended up facing. It was a record-breaking amount of crying. Terza screamed ceaselessly until her wails made nails on a chalkboard seem like wind chimes. We offered her lollipops and snacks and pacifiers and iPhones and these things would cause her screaming to downshift to a vehement whine but the sound just never stopped.
After a half hour of toddler yelling, my brain felt positively addled and I yelled: “ICE CREAM! SHE NEEDS ICE CREAM!” to David.
“WHERE?”
“JUST PULL OVER AS SOON AS YOU SEE ANYPLACE REMOTELY RELATED TO ICE CREAM!”
It was a stroke of luck that had us passing by a Dairy Queen several minutes later. We all poured out of the car, yelling “ICE CREAM ICE CREAM” in desperate conciliatory tones at the baby who could not hear us through the massive wall of sound emanating from her mouth.
The sound mercifully ceased as soon as we shoved an ice cream cone in her hand. While she was distracted, we strapped her back in her car seat, cone dripping vanilla blobs onto her lap. Yes, she’d be covered in a sticky coat of ice cream, but it was a small price to pay for silence.
I buckled my seat belt and asked David if we should consider turning around.
“We’re more than halfway there,” he said. “And if we turn around, she’ll still have to be in the car for another forty minutes.”
“Plus, I’m sure the orchard will cheer her up.” I concurred.
“And she’s quiet now,“ he concluded.
I believe the term is “mutually enabling.”
The ice cream bought us another five minutes of peace, which left only twenty minutes of screaming before we reached our destination. The change in scenery of the orchard earned us another five minutes of silence before that novelty wore off and the whimpering began again. It started soft but I knew it was only a matter of time before the crying would escalate.
“Quick!” I told the kids, “Grab apples!”
“But these look all bruised,” Primo protested.
“No, no! All good!” The scream treatment had forced me to communicate telegram-style, in short phrases that would fit into the three-second pause in between wails, when Terza paused to breathe.
“But I haven’t even tasted this tree yet,” Seconda complained.
“It’s great!” I chirped, trying not to sound frantic. I plucked apples off the dwarf trees with such a velocity that several of them flew out of my hand in the process.
Within ten minutes, our bag was full.
“Yay!” I cheered, “We did it!”
“But we only have Red Delicious!” Primo objected, “Aren’t we going to get Granny Smiths? And Fujis?”
The baby had thrown herself on the ground, which was essentially a blanket of rotting, worm-ridden apples, and was kicking her feet and thrashing back and forth, yelling, “I NO LIKE IT!”
“No time,” I barked.
There is always time for a commemorative photo, however.
“Smile!” I shouted. As if that was possible.
In the photo, David is grimacing with the effort of trying to keep hold of the baby who is flailing around in fury. The kids are standing on either side of him, Seconda’s eyebrows are furrowed and her mouth is open, as she makes an annoyed remark about how the baby ruins everything. Primo is holding the enormous bag of hopelessly imperfect apples, looking aggrieved.
The photo won’t ever be framed and displayed proudly on our mantle. It won’t be posted on Facebook. But I’ll put it in our album, hoping it serves as proof later on that David and I were good parents, or at least that we were crappy parents only accidentally while trying really hard to be good. If nothing else, it will document that we provided the kids with tradition. Ample, occasionally harrowing, tradition.
Nicole C. Kear is author of the new memoir Now I See You (St. Martin’s Press); you can find out more info at www.nicolekear.com.
