DADWAGON

Meta Mulcahy is dead. Now, to most people, this probably doesn’t mean much, unless you’re a fan of Catholics for Choice, the abortion-rights organization I believe she helped found in 1973, but to me she was simply my neighbor. I’d often see her on my block, usually with her little dog, and if Sasha was with me, Meta would greet her by name. It wasn’t much, just one of those simple neighborhood interactions, but it was nice, something to look forward to whenever I took Sasha out.

Anyway, Meta died a couple of weeks ago, at the age of 74, so that’s that. I don’t know any details beyond the barest facts: she was and is no more.

Sasha, of course, will remember none of this. She’s just two and a half, and her memory of family members is still a little hazy. She’ll respond to the idea of Grandma and Grandpa, but yesterday, when my sister, Nell, called, I could see that the idea of “Auntie Nell” didn’t exactly trigger a strong emotional response. (Hey, Nell, we’ve gotta have you guys hang out more!)

I can’t get too worked up about this myself, either. What can you expect of a toddler? That she’ll remember the minor characters who passed in and out of her pre-sentient life? Characters like Meta and Sun Ayi, her first nanny, who moved back to China and then to Seoul?

Of course, there’s some kind of chance as well that some memory, some image, will linger in Sasha’s developing consciousness—something she’ll cling to as a first memory, however warped by time and by other people’s recollections. My own first memories go back to when I was just 18 months old, but are so generic (getting a cookie from our upstairs neighbor) as to be unreliable (who doesn’t have such memories?).

Last night, when I picked Sasha up from preschool, I considered for a bit whether to bring her to a remembrance ceremony for Meta Mulcahy, held in a garden two blocks from our street. But then, the father of Sasha’s best friend, Katerina, invited me out for a drink—it was my birthday—and I said yes. As with Sasha, Meta will remain a hazy part of my own memory, the old woman next door who always said hello to my daughter, and nothing more.

But I’m left with one last question, this one unanswerable: In which child’s memory will I be but a cameo, a half-seen minor character? Whose Meta am I?

The Natick Mall, in Natick, Mass., is a lonely place on a Sunday before noon. Though the mall is technically open, few of the stores have lifted their security gates, so while women peruse the early-functioning department stores, husbands—toting young children—wander the empty corridors.

That, at least, was my experience last week, and it was a strange one, leading Sasha around the mall and encountering, again and again, guys just like me—dads with toddler girls in tow. We interacted a bit, but not too much. I explained to one guy that Sasha’s helium balloon had come from Nordstrom’s children’s-shoes department. Then he said, “She’s really cute.”

How are you supposed to respond to this? I mean, besides by saying thank you? Am I supposed to say his daughter is really cute? I wanted to, but, well, she was just okay. Actually, she wasn’t cute at all, and for a moment I worried for her future in middle school, when not being cute at all really becomes a problem for some kids. So, I didn’t parrot his line.

Instead, Sasha and I kept wandering around, and eventually the stores began to open. On the second floor, they had these cool shopping cart–slash–animal-themed cars, and I dumped $5 into a machine to rent one. Sasha loves that kind of crap, and I pushed her around.

We went to the Lego store, where I listened to one dad tell his 5-year-old they were going to start doing more fun things at night than just playing videogames, and that the kid would have try to like these new things, although they would still play some videogames too.

Then we went to Pottery Barn Kids, where Sasha pretended to make pizza and ice cream on a toy oven. Another kid, maybe 4 years old, joined her, and together they made me many imaginary snacks. The other kid’s mother watched us for a while, then told me, in a vaguely Eastern European accent, “You’re terrific!” Apparently, the other kid’s father is a total asshole.

Sometime around 1pm, we met up with Jean and ate lunch in the food court. Shitty Asian noodles for the women—which they loved—and kinda shitty Indian food for me.

So, that’s the mall. A nice little midday experience for me, but as I watched everyone else there I began to understand that for them, this was routine. Those dads with their not-so-cute kids had to do this ALL THE TIME, and put up with the demands of their not-so-cute kids to ride in animal-shaped shopping carts and watch them throw Legos on the ground and refuse to eat shitty Asian noodles. This is their life—fun for me for a couple of hours, but an eternity in hell for those who’ve chosen the suburban path. New York may make child-rearing fucking impossible at times, but at least I don’t have to look forward to weekends at the mall.

Last night was pretty much the worst bathtime ever. It was time for the twice-weekly shampooing of Sasha’s hair, and she was having none of it, taking multiple timeouts before finally agreeing to walk into the bathroom, disrobe, and be cleaned. Only, I made a mistake. After squirting some shampoo in her little hand, I made the mistake of putting some in my own hand and rubbing it into her hair. That set her off. She—not me—is the one who’s supposed to start the shampooing.

Soon we were struggling out in the hallway, me scrubbing her hair while she writhed on the floor, and then I had to carry her into the bathroom, lower her into the tub, and pour buckets of water over her head while she stood there silent with shock. Then she screamed some more.

And actually, this miserable resistance had started much earlier. When we pulled up to the front gate of my apartment building, Sasha refused to get off the bike. And obviously, I understood: She doesn’t want to go inside, doesn’t want a bath, doesn’t want a bottle of warm milk—all of these things together spell bedtime, which, as a toddler, she’s duty-bound to put off as long as possible.

Yesterday’s resistance, however, was different—more serious, more deeply felt. And in fact, on the bike ride home, Sasha had told me why she didn’t want to go home:

“I don’t want to dream,” she’d said from her Ibert kid’s seat between my handlebars.

Yes, Sasha—this sweet, wonderful, cute toddler—has nightmares. Often, she’ll wake up once or twice, usually before midnight, screaming and crying in terror, and I’ll rush into her room to comfort her with a hug and put her back down to sleep.

What are the nightmares about? She never says, but on Sunday, as we drove back to Brooklyn from Boston, we got a clue. It was mid-afternoon, and Sasha had fallen asleep in her car seat, when Jean and I suddenly heard her cry out.

“Daddy, please! Daddy! Please! Daddy, please!”

And then:

“Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go!”

Um, heartbreaking a little? For a Daddy who’s always going somewhere—it’s my job, after all—this was crushing, but at least I began to understand the kid a bit better.

The frustrating thing is that there isn’t all that much I can do about it. When she wakes up in terror, I’m always there for her, reassuring her that everything is okay, and I give her a big hug, and then everything is okay. But now that she knows what kind of scary dreams might face her as she goes down to bed… I mean, I can explain to her that the nightmares aren’t real, that she can always just wake up, but how much of that will a two-and-a-half-year-old understand?

Let’s just hope tonight goes okay. And tomorrow night.