Zoo trip offers another rite of passage on parenting timeline

While I am not typically one to run around telling folks how to live their lives, I did mark the recent occasion of a friend’s first week of fatherhood by offering this little nugget of advice.

“Sometime in the next two years, you’re going to be trying to rock this kid back to sleep at 2 a.m. after a diaper change that could have set off alarms at a toxic waste facility. You’ll find yourself slipping into a sleep-deprived moment of hopeless despair with the feeling that you’re going to be changing diapers for the rest of your life. It is at that very moment you will remember me telling you to enjoy and embrace these days because they go by in the blink of an eye.”

While fatherly advice is easy to give from my current perch on the paternal timeline, there’s no guarantee it’s going to be well-received by others of a different station. Furthermore, just when I catch myself smugly believing I’ve got the parenting thing licked, along comes another moment to remind me you’re never really out of the woods once you’ve loosed your progeny on the world.

Kristin and I took our grandsons to the zoo this past weekend to get them out of their parents’ hair for a few hours. It was a much-anticipated trip for James, who, at nearly 4 years old, is all about going and doing. Max, at half that age, is pretty much just along for the ride on such adventures. As fate, luck and the dubious chemistry of a gently rocked mixture of milk, bananas and animal crackers inside the gut of a semi-reclined 2-year-old would have it, we arrived in the parking lot just in time for an oral eruption that could most accurately be described as volcanic.

No strangers to motion sickness (compliments of our youngest child Sylvia, who could chuck her lunch after a 1-mile drive to the grocery store), Kristin and I immediately set to work on damage control, swapping the tot into a spare shirt and jacket. The poor boy’s pants had to stay for lack of a backup pair, however, and we expended a half tub of baby wipes in an effort to hide the evidence. As for his demeanor, Max proved an amicable patient. Once Mt. Vesuvius had fully erupted, he became just another kid at the zoo.

If you think James stood by in silent empathy while all of this took place, you’d be mistaken. He was a 3-year-old stuck outside the gates of the zoo “because his dumb brother puked all over the place!” Compassion hadn’t a prayer in this particular situation.

Of course we completed the mission! Had we not entered the zoo that day, the screams of betrayal would have shattered window glass throughout the entire Greater Akron area. Besides, the lemurs and gibbons don’t care how you smell. They spend half their time flinging feces at each other. Furthermore, our fellow humans were easily fooled, given the environment. I overheard a young mother say, “Yes, honey, I know it smells yucky in here, but that’s just how bears smell.”

These moments will be gone in the blink of an eye.

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John atjlorson@alonovus.com.