“Thank You, Kind Sir” – A Parenting Memory Which Endures

The Mimi’s Restaurant at 3375 E Main St. Ventura, California went out of business in February of 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The building at that location has been an empty shell for several years.

But I still remember the evening we took our toddler to eat there. It must have been sometime in 2008. Struggling with a colicky baby and feeling more than a little overwhelmed, my wife and I wanted to go out to dinner. After months at home struggling to get sleep and deal with our new arrival, we wanted to feel like adults and venture back out into the world. After seemingly endless groggy days and long nights of formula spit-up, dirty diapers, and crying jags with a newborn, my wife and I wanted to go out to dinner like normal people. So we went to Mimi’s Restaurant and got a booth for the three of us. The evening did not go well.

Our daughter Julia must have been about a year and half old. As we sat in our booth in the crowded restaurant, Julia would not sit still in her seat. She would crawl under the table or struggle out of my arms. It was a constant struggle. Other patrons started to stare at us in our discomfort. I started to sweat. Instead of ordering food to eat at our table, we changed our order “to go.” As soon as possible we wanted to get our unruly toddler out of polite adult society and back home where chaos could unfold in private. I was embarrassed. More than a few of the other restaurateurs were whispering. To give you an image of what this might look like, here are some photos of our daughter from that time –

– do you see what I mean? She could be a devil one moment, an angel the next. It was stressful.

Sigh, our daughter was a toddler. Capricious and extreme swings in behavior are normal for toddlers. Nobody can change that. Give it a few years and they will grow out of it, but until then…. you will experience joy and you will suffer, in almost equal parts.

At any rate, while I was struggling to get my arms around Julia in the restaurant and keep her seated, an elderly gentleman approached us. With a smile on his face, he said something like this:

“You don’t realize this now. But being a parent is not always going to be this difficult. You are in the middle of it right now. But be patient and it will get better. Trust me.”

I must have mumbled some pleasantry back to him while I wrestled with my daughter. He eventually went back to his seat. We left soon after. I never saw him again.

But I was in a jacuzzi two days ago watching a young-ish father deal with his toddler daughter. This little girl was equal parts cute as a button and at the same time exasperating and intractable. “That guy and his wife are IN IT,” I thought to myself. I felt a little sorry for him. “Raising kids sure is for the young,” I reflected. I was relieved to be beyond all that. I don’t regret having kids – not by a long shot – but boy is there a price to be paid.

And I thought about that old guy who went out of his way to try, in his own indirect way, to console a pair of overwhelmed new parents some 17 years ago. There is a good chance he is no longer alive today. But I appreciated his gesture; I never forgot what he said, or what he was trying to communicate. It took some courage to get up and do what he did. Nobody else in that restaurant did. They all saw us struggling, too.

If I could, this is what I would tell him:

“Thank you, kind sir, for the generous message of that evening so long ago. Yes, my wife and I were struggling. We had another baby not long afterwards, and we were back in the middle of it all again. Newborn babies not sleeping through the night, then toddlers who are mobile enough to get in all sorts of trouble but have absolutely no common sense – it is enough to try the patience and energy of even the strongest, most patient adult.

“You knew this, being older than me. And you mentioned that ‘things would get better,’ and they did. Thank you for the words. More important still: thank you for the message of support from an older generation to a younger one that it would work out. That I was part of a larger context of older adults who had been tested and found successful at parenting, and that with patience I could do it, too.

“Thank you.”

I would also tell him: That unruly toddler you saw at Mimi’s that night is currently 18-years old and on the verge of graduating high school with almost perfect grades. Although she was a nightmarish baby and toddler, she has given us hardly any problems at all as a teenager. Yes, our oldest daughter was a “hot mess” in her first few years. She was not an “easy baby.” But she has earned almost perfect grades in high school, four year all league athlete, editor of the school newspaper, among many other accomplishments. She will start at UCLA class of 2029 in a few months. She has come a long way from that moment when you saw her creating havoc in that restaurant back in 2008.

You were right: “It will get easier. It will be ok.”

Thank you for reaching out, Mr. Good Samaritan. Thank you for your expression of faith in what my wife and I were doing – in keeping the long view in mind. It was not easy – it still is not easy – but we were and are up to the job. Just like you probably were before us. As a new father many years ago you faced a challenge and figured it out. I would figure it out, too.

A former student turned friend of mine is now in that same boat with two young children of his own. He and his wife are on the verge of being overwhelmed – in fact, on a certain late night or stressful afternoon I am sure they are overwhelmed. I get it. Almost the first thing I want to do when my current school year finishes in four weeks is to go down to San Diego and do some babysitting – giving my friend and his wife a bit of support. This kind of thing is important. Not so much only for a few hours of help, but for the moral message that others are with you in this familyhood journey. It might even be more work for parents to have a babysitter like me upset the daily rhythms of the family, but the message of support and concern way outweigh that. Like that older gentleman told me, having babies and toddlers is a stressful and unique time of life for parents. But it is also relatively brief; it doesn’t last forever. Life will stabilize, more or less. And you will be so in love and galvanized by the joy of new life – your baby! – that the adrenaline will help take you through. You can handle this. Your life will be so much richer than it was before. “I’ll figure it out.”

This young adult in San Diego routinely tells me that many of his peers – married young adults in their mid-30s – are mostly against having children. They focus on the short-term negatives of becoming parents and thereby lose sight of the long-term positives. From what he tells me, these young adults are afraid of having kids – of losing their freedom to do whatever they want. Having kids appears inconvenient and stressful and they would prefer to spend their time, energy, and money elsewhere. These guys lose sight of the major positives, in my opinion. They hesitate to embrace the adventures of parenthood, and so miss out on the discipline of the lifestyle and the benefits down the road. 

The statistics bear all this out: the birthrate in the United States has dropped precipitously. Check out this chart:

Clearly, many Americans are increasingly deciding not to become parents. My oldest daughter was born in exactly that year when birth rates began to decline seriously.

Why are so many young people in their prime childrearing years backing off? Why are they such pussies? Are they afraid of the challenges life with children brings? Are they shrinking into a smaller concept of family and of life? Retreating into individual pursuits – travel, yoga, eating out, therapy, video games, activism, crocheting, careering, whatever? Are those activities really that enriching and life-giving? Do they sustain over time? Or are they failing to invest in larger family ventures which bring the larger rewards in the end. I have heard the reasons why some defer having children. Life is too expensive. Kids are too difficult. Marriage is too hard. Politics are too unstable. The world is spinning out of control. Peak oil. Global warming. Rising autocracy. Wars and rumors of war. The sky is falling. “So I will retreat into a defensive crouch. I will remain childless.” It is a sort of thumb’s down vote on the world at large and the future.

Wah.

Look, I recognize there are some people for whom marriage and a family would be a horrible idea. I have a number of “confirmed bachelor” buddies who, for complicated reasons, are better off unmarried and without offspring. That is reality. I understand. But there are also plenty of other adults who could and would be better off ultimately enmeshed in the matrix of marriage and family life who don’t do so for reasons which are essentially cowardly. They are afraid. They lack decision. They are waiting for everything to be just “perfect” – and they never are. They are online too much: they are into “doomerism.” They don’t have enough money – or they think they don’t have enough money. They struggle to find a suitable mate. They would prefer to attend music festivals on weekends and travel overseas on vacations rather than spend two decades in the trenches raising children. Being responsible for an infant or a toddler is a non-starter. It would not be “fun.”

I have seen guys like this. They look like a “man-child” to me. They are 40-years old, but they sound like 20-year olds. In Macau some thirty years ago an elderly Chinese gentleman told me, “A boy does not become a man until he marries and starts a family.” I thought that a bit extreme. But there is also truth to it. 

I have seen women around 40-years of age who have not been able to find a life partner and so never got married. But they still want to become a parent desperately, even as they realize the clock is ticking and time is running out. So they flirt with the idea of getting a sperm donor and becoming a single mother and raising a baby on her own. On the one side, I am impressed. This lady sees the value of becoming a parent and is willing to do whatever it takes to get there – to sacrifice so much. I suspect no matter the cost, that person would think it worth it twenty years later. Women so often realize what is important much more clearly than do almost all men in similar situations. Yet I think it crazy to want to try and have a baby and raise that human all by yourself. The perfect number of adults to raise a child is three, in my opinion. It should be two moms, two dads, a mom and a dad, whatever – and then a grandparent or aunt or uncle or neighbor, whatever – another involved adult. THREE ADULTS. Volunteering to become a single parent is asking for punishment, in my experience. There is not enough of you. It is like too little butter spread over too much bread. You might get your child to adulthood, but it is going to leave marks on yourself and your child, unless you have an outstanding support network, maybe.

My wife and I did it all by ourselves. We had no family in the area. We were stretched thin. It was difficult. Raising young children required enormous amounts of effort, patience, time, money, and maturity. But we had those things, to one degree or another. We figured it out.

Back at that Mimi’s restaurant in Ventura so many years ago, I was embarrassed that I could not control my toddler. I worried I might be ruining the dining experience of others. But a kind gesture of concern from a stranger did not go unnoticed. In fact, I never forgot it.

“Thank you, kind sir.” –

I would tell him, if I could. Or thank his descendants, if he were dead.

I am indebted, the same way I am indebted to the old man who took a lost crying child home forty years before that. An important trustworthy gesture, at just the right time. I owe them. The debt is not small. I recognize that.

So I will try and pay it forward, if I can. Help others in the same place I once was.

If I can.

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