Spain Dad, a baby blog

Shani wrenched the steering wheel and bumbled off the highway towards a gas station. She brought the car to a screeching halt, the doors sprung open, and all six of us scrambled out—as if the car were swarming with bees.

In fact, Alleke had vomited in the car. She was too young to know to use the paper bag in front of her, so she had fought the car seat and swung her head around like a loose garden hose, retching all over herself, the seats, and those of us trying to help her. The backseat looked like a paintball park, my nose burned from the smell of ammonia, and Allleke was screaming hysterically, no doubt horrified that her body had gone into reverse.

One of the side effects of living in the city without a car, we’ve discovered, is motion sickness. April laments how she used to be able to ride in a car backwards reading a book for hours without a problem. Now, because she goes everywhere on foot, even the thought of getting in a car makes her stomach turn.

After that trip, we abandoned our car seat at a friend’s house. We just left it there on their porch without even washing it. Six months passed. Then, a couple weeks ago our friends David and Daphne asked if we wanted to take a road trip to Valencia—in their car—and we said yes. Unfortunately we couldn’t avoid cars forever.

The day before our road trip, we stopped by to pick up the car seat, wash it out, and take it home. While we stood in front of our apartment building and I dug around in my pockets for the keys, Alleke held up her hand and said, “No casa.”

“You don’t want to go home?” I asked.

“Where do you want to go?” April probed.

“Broom broom,” Alleke replied, her chin up, pointing at the car seat sitting on the sidewalk.

I raised an eyebrow.

“You want to go in a broom broom,” I said, as condescendingly as if she had asked me to buy her a pony. “Do you remember the last time you rode in a broom broom?”

Alleke nodded and giggled. “Broom broom,” she said.

April and I spent the rest of the day explaining a new concept to Alleke called “tomorrow.” Just when I thought Alleke understood she had to go “night night” before she could get in the car, she walked over and started dragging the car seat towards the front door, stopping occasionally to point at the door and say, “Broom broom.”

The car trip to Valencia went fine. Alleke is finally old enough to take Dramamine, so she slept most of the way. I’m sitting here at the beach scribbling these words down in a notebook while I watch April and Alleke scamper back and forth down the beach collecting shells. Now that we’re here, I think I’m beginning to understand why Alleke wanted to get in that car seat, even though it made her sick before.

Alleke has learned that getting in a car means being together as a family. It means she has Mom and Dad all to herself, and finally she gets all the attention she wants. It means Mom and Dad don’t have to go to work. It means she gets to play all day. Ultimately, I think it means Alleke weighed the costs of getting sick again and decided it was still worth it to her to get in the car.

Parents make sacrifices for their kids, and sometimes, kids make sacrifices for their parents.