Episode 88: temper tantrum // Thursday, July 2

“I want to watch a movie!”

“Where my cocky?”

“Buckle your seatbelt.”

“Why can’t we watch a movie?”“My cocky!”

“I can’t buckle myself.”

“Where my cocky?”

“In a minute, Mattea. Gabe, you’re eight years old. We can’t go anywhere until you buckle your seatbelt.”

“I caaaan’t!”

“Gabe, buckle up now.”

“But my waffle!”“Where did you get a waffle?”“Gabe, buckle up now!”

“My cocky! I need my cocky now!”

“Gabe, if you keep disobeying you’re going to lose something.”

“Everyone stop yelling!”

“But I caaaaan’t do it!”

(Exasperated scream)

(Pound desk)

“Stop the car!”

What you just heard was not the scene from some radio drama. It was family drama. Our family drama, to be exact.

After three months of logging disappointment after disappointment as every single thing we’d looked forward to in 2020 got cancelled, we finally got a chance to leave Oakland for the first and only time during this quarantine. Our friends invited us to their cabin, and so we excitedly piled up in the car and drove, stopping only for gas. And getting away was just as wonderful as we’d hoped it would be. We felt lighter, freer, a little more able to breathe. Our friends had invited us to stay as long as we wanted, but we opted to just stay for the weekend. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Even though we’d created the parameters of this podcast ourselves, we didn’t feel like we could bend the rules and take time off. Our decision not to stay longer was also tied up in our sense of obligation to the unemployed preschool teacher who has been spending time with our kids for part of every weekday so we can work, an arrangement that came about when a generous donor offered it to us a couple of months ago, and one that has been crucial for both us and the teacher. If we took a day off, it meant a day off for her, too, and we knew that she needed to work as much as we did.So Monday morning came and we did our best to get on the road fast. If we left by 8:00, we’d be back when we’d promised the teacher we would be, and give ourselves a little margin.

Packing up at the end of a trip is always a little sad, but this time it felt especially so, because our brief escape had been more restorative than we’d anticipated. We didn’t want to go back home. As we scurried around collecting orphan shoes and floaties, we could tell our friends were disappointed, too.  It was 8:30 before all five of us were in the car. Everyone was crabby. Nate pulled out of the driveway and Mattea immediately let out a piercing yelp that made us fear she’d been hurt, but when I twisted around from the passenger seat, I saw that she’d just dropped her pink lovey on the floor.

The lovey was long ago named Cotton Candy, but Mattea just calls it “Cocky.” Unbeknownst to us until that moment, Gabe was scarfing down a waffle he’d swiped from the kitchen, and was panicking because he’d dropped into the space between his seat and his sister’s. Grace was using her whiniest voice possible to ask if they could watch a movie on the way home.It was then that I noticed that two of our kids weren’t even bucked in--even though they’d told us a moment before that they were. Nate jerked the car to the side of the road. Our friends’ cabin was still in sight in the rearview mirror. All five of us were talking at once.

“I want to watch a movie!” Grace whined.

Nate and I both talk-yelled over our shoulder at the same time, "Gabe and Grace, buckle your seat belts."

Grace obliged, but beside her Mattea was wailing, “Where my Cocky!” and Gabe was flapping his arms like they were two limp noodles crying, “I caaaan’t!”

“Gabe,” I twisted in my seat, my voice tense. “Buckle your seatbelt. We can’t go anywhere until you do.” 

Gabe put his hands on his face and let out a despairing cry, “I caaaan’t!” On one side of him, Mattea was blubbering about Cocky. On the other, Grace had started to cry simply because everyone else was upset.“Gabe,” Nate said, “buckle your seatbelt now.”

“Cocky!” Mattea sobbed.

“I don’t know how,” Gabe cried, wringing his hands. 

“You’re eight years old,” Nate continued tersely. “You’ve been buckling your own seat belt for years.”

“COCK-Y!,” Mattea shrieked.

“In a minute, Mattea,” I said.

“I can’t even do it!” Gabe cried again.

“Just everyone stop yelling,” Grace said, tears coursing down her cheeks.

“Gabe,” I cried, exasperated. “Just buckle yourself. We’re already late getting home.”

“I can’t do it!” Gabe cried again, flopping over to the side like his limbs had no bones.

“Give. Me. My. COCK-Y!” Mattea screamed.

“I said, in a minute! Gabe, your seatbelt!”

“Stop it,” Grace cried again. “Just everyone stop.”

“I can’t do it,” Gabe screamed angrily.

And then it happened. 

Nate let out a furious yell and pounded his fist on the ceiling of the car. (Boom, boom, boom.) 

The car lurched toward the ditch and I screamed, “stop the car!” Actually, what I said included another word, one that I have managed to not say in eight years of parenting, but screamed out loudly now. Thankfully, since the family temper tantrum had reached a fever pitch, the kids did not notice my slip. They were too busy screaming at Daddy to stop the car.

Nate put the car into park just in time, and the kids hushed as they noticed his knuckle. It was oozing blood. The sunroof was still intact, but there was a smear of blood on its cover.

“You almost crashed the car, Daddy,” Grace whimpered, as if he needed to be told this.

“Where my Cocky,” Mattea whispered, but it was halfhearted. Even she seemed to understand that her need did not rank particularly high in this moment.

Gabe reached over, retrieved cotton candy with one swift motion, and returned it to Mattea, who sucked contently on her pacifier and let out a gratified sigh. 

Then he buckled himself into his seat without another word.

Everyone was quiet as I found a napkin for Nate’s hand. 

Grace was the first to speak. “I’m sorry we lied about buckling our seats.” 

“Gabe?” I said, turning to raise an eyebrow at him.

He mouthed shapeless words but no sound came out.

“It doesn’t count as an apology if we can’t hear it,” I said.

“Yeah, Gabe,” Grace said, fully recovered. “Not even I could hear that apology.”

Gabe had an aftershock tantrum, but eventually even he said he was sorry. We said we were sorry too, for losing our tempers and almost crashing the car. The kids lost their movie privileges, but settled for an audiobook. We made it home without stopping, on time despite our late start. 

On the drive home, after we’d all calmed down and the kids were listening happily to their story, Nate and I talked about what happened. His knuckle was still bleeding, but he was fine. 

The moment that had spiked our anger was the same for both of us. It was when Gabe began acting helpless. 

I can remember many times over the years when my kids’ helplessness has triggered my anger, but it’s happened the most with Gabe. There was the time when he was four, when he stood in the bathroom for five minutes, refusing to sit on the toilet until finally he pooped his pants. Up until very recently, dinnertime was a stalemate of not eating because Gabe refused to feed himself. School was hard this past year, largely because he’d spend hours every evening sobbing at the table, claiming he couldn’t pick up his pencil.

This is the same kid who will sometimes vacuum the house without being asked. Who has happily taken on the role of unloading the dishwasher every morning. Who folds his clothes Marie Kondo style when he’s in the mood to be clean. No less than a dozen times, we’ve gone to open the kids’ bedroom door and realized that he’s secretly disassembled the doorknob, flipped it around, and put it back together again the opposite way--all without anyone noticing.

I think what is so infuriating about the helpless act, is that it feels like we’re being asked to redo a part of parenting we thought we were done with. We thought we’d already paid our dues, checked off that hard-won box, and yet here we were again. But this time around, our kids helplessness wasn’t about their ability or developmental stage in life. It was a helplessness that felt more like disobedience.

In other words, it’s a painful reminder of our lack of control.

And maybe that’s why we lost it, why I dropped the f-bomb, why Nate split his hand open, why we almost crashed the car. Because so much of life feels out of control right now. We’re all trying to assert control where we can, trying to stop this virus, trying to homeschool our kids, trying to start a new business or do the old business in a new way. But still, there is so much we can’t control.

And on top of all of that, we can’t control our kids. And it feels like we should be able to. Like their moments of helplessness are proof that we’re not the parents we’d like to be. It’s the most punishing of judgments, that after all of the time and energy and life you’ve poured into these little people who you love more intensely than anything--after all that, your efforts have failed. Your eight-year-old cannot, will not buckle his seatbelt. At least not today.

And maybe that’s the daily gift of sanity today. To remember that we all feel helpless sometimes, and to learn how to not just let the moment pass and apologize, but to figure out why it set us off in the first place. If we can figure out what set us off, maybe we can get a little better at helping each other when we start to feel helpless ourselves.

That moment in the car was ugly, but I don’t think it left any scars. Nate’s hand is healing. We had a good talk with the kids later. Ultimately, our family temper tantrum reminded all of us that while we’ve been doing a decent job keeping it together, life has been hard during this quarantine. In retrospect it wasn’t all that surprising that we all blew up when our one chance at escape was cut short.

We’ll probably have a few more temper tantrums before this is all over. But this time is teaching us how to understand each other better. It’s giving us the opportunity to extend grace to each other more frequently and in bigger doses than we’re used to. It’s showing us that even the temper tantrums have something to teach us.

Before I go, I want to share with you that Shelter in Place is up for the People’s Choice Award, an award where listeners vote for their favorite podcasts during the month of July. Visit us at shelterinplacepodcast.info to vote, and to find other ways to support this podcast and our family.

You may have noticed that we’ve started including Easter Eggs for you at the end of some of our episodes. Some days, it’s been a very personal thank you to some of our donors. Today, we’ve included an extra little something to make you laugh. Stick around through the credits to hear it. 

But first, I want to thank some of our newest supporters of Shelter in Place.

Dan Livsey and Mary Reed, thank you for believing in this work and for taking the time to leave a thoughtful review on iTunes as well as support us financially. Mary, long before anyone else I knew was having kids, you gave me a vision for motherhood that I’ve come back to again and again. Thank you for showing me that I don’t have to be ga ga for babies to love my kids well. 

Damon & Alice Snyder, from preschool co-ops to the best Old Fashioned I’ve ever had, you’ve given us your hospitality, generosity, and friendship again and again. Alexis’s kind note, Dietrich’s amazing pour-over coffee and smoothies, and Duram’s dinnertime conversation are gifts I’m carrying with me still today. When I think of the kind of family I hope we can become, I think of you.

Alexis & Matt Iaconis, so much of life has happened with you, our California family. What a gift it continues to be to have our kids grow up together, to see each other through so many changes and challenges and joys. You guys are showing us that it’s possible to rewrite life as we know it, and your support of our family and this podcast have been overwhelmingly generous from the very beginning. It’s a joy to be on this journey with you. We can’t imagine it any other way.

And now, if you’re still listening, here’s a little outtake. I was trying to record an episode and the kids kept interrupting and talking loudly just outside the window. Here’s what happened.