Sometimes a
piece of
plastic and metal
and wires can give
you a very special
gift - an unexpected, out-of-the-blue,
in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of
gift. You know, just your regular
everyday life-changing epiphany
type-gift.
It’s been almost 20 years and still I
sometimes wake in the middle of the
night, stare into the murky uncertain
darkness, wrestling reality out of some
deep level of REM (rapid eye
movement) sleep, and I hear the
unmistakable swirling crackle-hiss-crackle come echoing faintly out of a
small speaker box that hasn’t been on
my bedside table for nearly two
decades.
No, it isn’t some peeved poltergeist, or
visiting aliens, or even shadow
people.
You see, way back when, it was kind
of a big deal. At least for first-time
parents it was. Ah, first-time parents -
those pitiful sleep-deprived zombie
moms and dads stumbling through the
day, bumping into things, trying
desperately to somehow remain
upright and semi-coherent. And those
were the lucky ones. 2.5 hours of
sleep every night. Lucky.
In fact, you could always tell parents
by the glaze in their bloodshot eyes,
their slightly slurred speech, and their
complete inability to carry out even
the simplest of tasks - like staying
awake, for example. Child induced
sleep deprivation is an ugly thing
sometimes.
But I digress. The “big deal” in those
faint and fitful days was the newfangled
ability to listen to your child
in another room. Kinda like the CIA
or FBI electronically eavesdropping
on innocent citizens. Only less fun.
Now, of course I’m not talking about
listening in on your teenager’s
weekend plans, because that would
not only be immoral and possibly
illegal, but that would just be asking
for BIG TROUBLE. Trust me, you, as
a loving and caring parent of that
teenager, don’t want to know.
No, I’m talking about one of the
greatest inventions of the 20th
century: the television remote control.
Ha Ha - I’m kidding - that’s the
second greatest invention of the 20th
century. Of course I’m referring to
The Baby Monitor.
When my wife and I brought home
that miraculous little unit (the
monitor, not the baby) we marveled at
the pale blue and white plastic boxes,
revelling in the space-age device,
silently thanking the clever Fischer
Price gods.
So when little William took his nap
that day, the marvelous monitor was
already in place. One little plastic box
(called the “space-age transmitter”)
stood proudly on the change table
beside our son’s crib, the other little
plastic box (called the “space-age
receiver”) was installed on my
bedside table, right between my old
gooseneck reading lamp and my old
‘state-of-the-art’ electronic alarm
clock (the kind with the numbers on
little plastic pages physically flipping
the time away.)
To our son Billy the concept of “nap”
meant “being held against his will in
his crib”. Not realizing that nap time
was not meant for him at all, but was
for the sole purpose of maintaining his
parents’ sanity, Billy would use the
‘nap time’ opportunity to toss his
bottoes (that would be his “bottle”)
and various stuffies and toys out of his
crib, to “vocalize” (translation: yell
and cry loudly and incessantly), and to
hoist himself up by grabbing onto the
crib rail and wobbling on chubby little
legs upright, so that his ‘vocalizations’
could be produced much more
efficiently thereby gaining maximum
crying and yelling volume.
But it was a Saturday afternoon and I
was home, and I couldn’t wait to run into our room and flop down on the
waterbed, bobbing up and down,
floating away on my back, ready to
test out the amazing new baby
monitor.
With gleeful anticipation I reached
over and clicked it on. And wonder of
wonders, it was almost exactly like
holding a large seashell to your ear -
especially if it was filled with mud. It
was swirling, gurgling and whooshing
away not unlike the sound of an alien
ship landing, or perhaps those shadow
people floating around the room.
Completely certain that my son
doesn’t usually make the sound of an
out-of-tune Fender Stratocaster
plugged into a phase-shifter effects
pedal feedbacking through a blown
Peavy amp, I sneak into his room
where I find him hanging onto the crib
rail, doing wobbly involuntary deep
knee bends like a ballet dancer at the
barre. I give him a hug and put him
down with his bottoes, and, trying to
convince myself I know what I’m
doing, I pick up the space-age
transmitter to (as we handymen call it)
“troubleshoot”.
Having cleverly ascertained that the
unit was indeed plugged into the wall,
and the On switch was turned to the
On position, I nearly gave up and
returned the space age Baby Monitor
to the store with grave
disappointment. That’s when I
cleverly spotted one more switch -
something called “Channel A/Channel
B” and cleverly ascertained that it was
on the wrong Channel. Apparently
sound waves have to be aligned. Or
maybe the alphabet has to match. Who
knew?
In any case, I cleverly switched it to
Channel B. By this time, Billy was
already up on his feet again crying for
Diddy (that would be “Daddy” not “PDiddy”
the rapper). I gave him
another hug and laid him back down
with his bottoes, and scurried back to
belly-flop onto the water bed.
Listening. All excited, like.
The marvelous little creation of
modern technology was working!
Amazingly, I could now hear Billy
clearly yelling and crying and
throwing his bottoes onto the floor,
much much louder than I could from
outside his room!
A week or two of baby monitoring
later, my wife and I came to realize
that the miraculous machine not only
gave us a sense of security and
watchfulness and increased parental
control and responsibility, it also gave
us a keen sense of much less sleep. We
would lie awake for hours
involuntarily listening to the loud and
clear sounds of our son breathing and
tossing and turning in the other room.
And when we finally did drift off to
sleep, we would be wrenched from
fevered dreams by our son crying and
calling to us at ten thousand decibels
through what sounded like, in the
hushed dead of night, the PA system
from a Rolling Stones stadium
concert. And my little rock star would
wake us up on the average of 247
times a night.
Like everything else, you never quite
get used to it. And so it was that on
one fateful night, I was sleeping
fitfully, just beginning to enjoy a
dream about riding a Honda
motorcycle through the hallways of
my old high school, when I was
dragged to semi-consciousness by
painfully familiar sounds crackling
from the baby monitor.
I groaned. It couldn’t possibly be my
night to get up. My wife and I had
tried taking turns getting up during the
night. We’d tried alternating nights -
“you take Monday, Wednesday,
Friday and Sunday, and then we’ll
switch....”, the result being that neither
of us slept. Ever. Even the dog, who
slept on our feet at the end of the bed,
and who slept all day long was tired
and irritable. In fact the only one in
the house not at all affected by severe
sleep deprivation was our son. So we
had decided that I would cover the
beginning half of the week and my
wife would cover the end half of the
week. It was only after my wife had,
apparently without waking up,
elbowed me in the ribs, that I
remembered that it was my half of the
week.
I managed somehow to stumble into
Billy’s room, where he was making
loud word-like noises while trying his
best to climb out of his crib. Probably
needs his diaper changed, I thought,
through my fog. He didn’t. Maybe he
needs some juice, I wondered out
loud. He didn’t. So I hugged him a
little, mumbled and slurred some
encouraging words, and laid him back
down, put his little blanket on him,
gave him his little stuffie and
automatically wound up his mobile.
I held my breath as the little Disney
figures floated round and round
slowly over his head, and the music
box melody of Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star tinkled for the millionth time,
faintly, in the Mickey Mouse nightlight
semi-darkness. I managed to tiptoe
delicately out of the room in a
semi-comatose state.
Back bobbing deliriously in the
waterbed, I was barely aware of the
mobile melody drifting from the baby
monitor, somewhere thousands of
miles away, aaahhhh ... now, I’m sure
I parked that motorcycle right near the
Principal’s office and...
WAHHHHHH!!!
I bolt upright, as if someone had
thrown an ice cold bucket of water on
me. I’m out of bed, scrambling to put
the fire out. But there’s no fire, it’s my
baby son crying for “Diddy!!”,
calling: “Out, Diddy! Out!?” But it’s too late. I’m flailing out the door,
frantically stubbing my big toe on the
door frame, lurching in pain on one
leg, pogo-sticking down the hall,
crashing in a heap in the room of the
world’s loudest child.
It’s 4:15 a.m., and I’m in excruciating
pain, I’m exhausted, and now I’m
angry. Barely able to control my
temper, I raise my voice: “BILLY!
LIE DOWN AND GO!... TO!...
SLEEP!!”
His chubby arms are up in the air
asking for a hug, but I pick him up,
yelling at him still, and PLUNK him
back down on his mattress much too
hard. I BANG the mattress by his
head with the palm of my hand. “BE
QUIET!!” I rage, completely out of
control. I grab the mobile, give it a
few furious cranks and leave the room
in a fuming huff.
Back in bed, I lay wide awake now,
feeling worse than before. Much
worse. He’s quiet in there now all
right, but as I listen to the music box
mobile wind down on the monitor, I
know I handled it all wrong; I know I
shouldn’t have let myself get so angry.
In my sleep-deprived state, I wonder
how my little boy will ever forgive me
for being such a terrible parent.
And then I hear a quiet rustling on the
baby monitor. Billy has found his
juice bottoes in his crib. I can hear the
warm familiar sounds of him starting
to drink his beloved apple juice, and
somehow that makes me feel even
worse.
And then I hear a little whisper over
the monitor. It’s soft and it’s quiet, and
it’s my son whispering to himself as
he finally falls asleep in his big room,
in his little crib. His first sentence.
“I wuff you, Diddy....”
I didn’t get a wink of sleep after that.
And I didn’t care, it was a gift - a gift
out of the blue, out of the darkness,
out of the mouth of a baby. That night
he taught me that love really is
innocent and pure. That love is caring
for someone always. Even when they
don’t deserve it.
A treasured gift given from a son to a
father.
Now, somehow, that baby of ours has
graduated high school, and in a few
short weeks he’ll be leaving home to
live in residence at university. And
I’m going shopping. I’m going to see
if the new-fangled monitors they
make these days work from hundreds
and hundreds of miles away.
