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In a former life, before I went back to my old job, before I was a stay-at-home dad, before my old job was just my job, I was a consultant. This involved a lot of travel, the kind of fly out Sunday, fly home Friday travel eagerly tolerated by recent college grads who see it as a sign of prestige, but the kind of travel that slowly grinds you down until all the airports feel the same, no one concourse or food court or rental car counter in Chicago different from another in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
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When I decided to quit my IT job four years ago to stay home with my son Carter, and then later my daughter Sadie, I knew I’d go back to work someday, just not when. My wife, Debbie, was building a successful business as a realtor, enough so that she could support the family on her own, and I was bored and frustrated with my job in corporate America. The choice was obvious. Instead of hiring a nanny, I would take care of the kids, and when I didn’t need to be at home anymore, I would go back to work.
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There is a point when you’re cleaning out the drainage grate of an auto shop, on your hands and knees and up to your elbows in filth, when you realize that at 19 years old you ought to think carefully about your future. I worked on the cleanup crew for Expressway Dodge in Evansville, Indiana the summer after my freshman year at Indiana University. The drain was clogged after I attempted to clean a garbage can from the auto bay where we sprayed undercoat onto the bellies of new Dodge Rams, Intrepids, and Neons to protect them from rock chips and muffle road noise. This particular garbage can was used for empty containers of undercoat. Our spray nozzle didn’t completely finish a container before it tapped out, so the remaining few ounces of thick tar was tossed along with it, safety cap never reattached. Over the course of the summer, this residual goo trickled down into a three-inch thick layer on the bottom of the garbage can that, when I sprayed it with cold water trying to rinse it out, hardened into the consistency of licorice Twizzlers. The nightcrawler-sized chunks of tar that I managed to dislodge from the bottom of the can washed down the drain running the center of the shop and packed the foundation for an impromptu wading pool of ashy water and petroleum-based fluids that greeted me when I returned from lunch. The passel of mechanics gathered around the mess had a high time watching me reach through the swirling rainbows and soggy paper towels to fish out the blockage. The tide subsided eventually, and I squatted on the sidewalk behind the shop and wrung out my socks.
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One of our neighbors in our old building had a baby about six months after we did. She was a nice woman, petite and pretty, with a soft southern drawl that let on that she was a transplant to Chicago from Alabama. I never spoke to her much until Carter was born and she was three months pregnant. Suddenly, she’d light up when she saw us, full of questions about how we planned to raise him.
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