Briefly is a weekly newsletter where I share original poems, short stories, essays, and now also tales of our adventures in “Joy,” our Airstream. Subscribing is free and means you’ll get a newsletter in your inbox (or via the Substack app) every Friday morning.
Life got away from me this week, so I ran out of time to draft a new post. I was planning to tell another “In the Airstream” story… that will have to wait until next week. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, here is one of my early essay posts from 2024.
The Manager
In 1999, my twins had just turned one year old, and my oldest was three. That was the summer we met The Manager. He doesn’t really exist. But conveniently, he is there if you need him. Let me explain.
We were vacationing with my husband’s family in a rental house perched on stilts above a beach on Lake Michigan. The deck offered great views, but the railing wasn’t safe for toddlers. However down a treacherous, splintery staircase, there was a nice sand and pebble beach. As a young mother, not yet comfortable with where to let go and when to relax, I was pretty much freaked out the entire time. I’m a professional catastrophizer; taught by the best - my mother. It’s hard to enjoy a beach when you have one child who can’t swim but wants to, and two other children who seem to think sand and pebbles are finger foods.
We had family there with us, but either they weren’t offering to watch, or I was too high strung to leave our brood in the hands of anyone else. It was a conundrum -- I needed desperately to escape, yet I was scared and guilted myself into trying to do everything myself. On this vacation I was coming to the conclusion that a vacation with three young children is not really a vacation. It’s just a change of scenery and not necessarily relaxing. My main goal shifted from hoping to relax in general to just escaping for one hour to take a walk down the beach with my husband.
One day we were all out to lunch. There were 12 of us. (Also not relaxing.) Our young immediate family made up five, then there was my father-in-law, my husband’s three sisters, a brother-in-law, and two cousins, also toddlers. I should mention that back then there was a chemical reaction when our three-year-old and his four-year-old cousin ever got together which caused them to abandon their normally lovely individual demeanors and morph into the spawn of hell. They’d been yelling and kicking and devilishly laughing at any adult attempts of control and were beginning to launch spoons spear-like at each other’s water glasses, when a big burly waiter approached our table. He had a beard and wore work boots, jeans, and a plaid shirt. He looked a lot like the giant lumberjack folk hero, Paul Bunyan.
In a stern, booming, yet kind voice he said, “Boys, you need to settle down over here.”
He emitted total power and strength. The little boys’ eyes widened to the size of their plates and their mouths dropped open in awe.
My father-in-law echoed, “Okay boys, we don’t want to have to ask the manager here to take you back to wash dishes now do we?”
The little boys put down their cutlery and just sat there silently as they ate their grilled cheese sandwiches. It was almost spooky. But then we had a nice lunch. I would have chalked it up to just that - a nice lunch - and moved on. But later that day the real magic happened.
When we got home, the twins went down peacefully for their afternoon nap. Then I tried desperately to get our three-year-old to sleep too because I really wanted that walk on the beach! After about 20 minutes of him fidgeting and giggling, I could see the window of opportunity beginning to close. I finally sat up exasperated and said, “Honey, you HAVE GOT TO TAKE A NAP!”
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. My sweet little boy stopped fidgeting and looked up at me with big eyes and said, “Mommy, if I don’t take a nap will The Manager come?” He looked worried as he waited for my reply.
It was as if the clouds parted and angels sang. I decided to lie to him. My rationale was that if other parenting lies such as Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were acceptable because kids get something out of it, then this lie was acceptable too, because parental peace of mind and relaxation is indirectly good for kids.
I held his hand and said with a concerned, loving look, “Yes, sweetie. If you don’t take a nap I may have to call The Manager. Now just lay down and snuggle up and you can get up in an hour.”
And just like that, he took a nap. We got our walk in, and the sand between my toes was like heaven. I finally got to relax.
For years, The Manager helped me reign in any difficult behavior with our sons. I have friends who have tried less malleable versions of the same idea, such as “the pilot”, “the policeman,” and “the teacher.” But The Manager is better. He is a vaguer, and more all-encompassing authority figure I could summon in any place, at any time.
If my children refused to leave the park, I’d simply grab my cell phone, pretend to start dialing, and say, “Okay, Im calling The Manager to see what he says.” And then, Boom! Like ducklings they’d fall in line. On a plane, in the car, in the grocery store, at the park, even in bed at night...I’d just pick up the phone, raise an eyebrow, and start dialing. “Nooooooo!” they’d scream in unison, “we’ll be good, we promise!” It was often short lived, but gave me enough to get home, do the shopping, get through a social situation, buy the stamps, whatever.
The only down side is that I sometimes wonder if we instilled a future issue with authority figures. My boys are older now. In fact they are young men. One is a graphic designer, one is in a band, and the other works in a nightclub as a manager*.