It takes most of the drive home from the nursery before Bobby finally nods off. A little twist of the rear view mirror shows me that Grace is still asleep, her head lolling uncomfortably against the hard window trim. The challenge now is to maximise the time for my own snooze before one of them wakes up. The question is where to stop – the road is so hemmed in by private property that there’s nowhere obvious to park and the few lay-bys are so narrow that the buffeting of passing vehicles will wake me up. So on I drive, feeling drowsier with every minute, longing to shut my eyes but unable to, until I decide to cut my losses and go home where I might at least be able to grab a few minutes parked outside the house.
The question now is whether to leave the engine running so that the vibrations keep them asleep enabling me to get a longer snooze or do the sensible thing and switch it off. If I leave it running there’s a remote chance that some of the exhaust fumes will find their way into the car, the worst-case scenario being asphyxiation. If I switch it off the sudden absence of vibration will probably wake them up. A look at the trees indicates a light wind blowing towards the front of the car which means that the exhaust fumes will be dispersed away from the rear, posing no danger. Decision made. The engine stays running. Straight away I enter a deep head lolling sleep from which I never want to wake.
Within what feels like seconds, but is in fact half an hour, I am jerked suddenly awake by a thumping on window. Outside the anxious face of the postman is staring in. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Um, yes. We were just having a snooze.’ The children start to stir in the back of the car.
‘I just thought I’d check. Engine running and that.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry. I hope you didn’t think..’
‘Well I did look for the hose.’
A man and two children, all slumped forward, in a car with the engine running. He’s joking now, but for a moment he wondered if it was a family suicide.
‘You’re not a banker, are you?’ he adds with a grin.
About Me
- chris rawlence
- I'm a 64 year old father with 5 children, oldest Jo 36 with 2 year old son Fidel, youngest Bobby 1, with Emily 29, Anna 12, and Grace 4 in the middle. Three mothers. One divorce. Married again last Saturday to the Mum of the youngest three. When I was 50 I thought the baby thing was all over but not a bit of it. Three more. So the run in to oblivion will be childcare. Lot's of it. And on the principle of IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM JOIN THEM I've decided, in that man way, to write about the still unfolding experience - a man's take on four decades of baby making, from the heady early years of 70s feminism, through communes, to nuclear convention, nuclear implosion, to family stability and a bus pass.
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