I knew for months that it was coming. My wife, who is a busy touring musician, would be gone for almost two weeks, leaving me at home and in charge of our three-year-old toddler. To say I was worried by such an epic expanse of time without my wife/his mum to provide, nourish and care for us would be like saying I’m only mildly concerned that the host of Celebrity Apprentice will soon be the leader of the free world.
Weeks before my wife left, I started having Cormac McCarthy-like nightmares of a father and his son, wandering aimlessly in rags, backs against the world. Malnutrition could be an issue. Starvation could be an issue. Guinness Book of Records-breaking screen time could be an issue. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
When I was a kid, on the rare occasions my mom went out of town – leaving my dad to care for my little sister and me – mom would arrange a “meal train” of sorts. Ever heard of it? Ladies like Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Englebert, and Mrs. Thomas would show up at our front door, arms weighed down with a meal for my dad to simply heat up and serve.
That “meal train” tradition for solo-parenting dads seems to have died right around the same time as the Betamax. This fall, I decided to boldly resurrect the tradition, but with a twist: I would invite my toddler and myself over to my all my friends’ homes for dinner. The email was entitled: “Wife away… PLEASE HELP US!”
Despite the completely entitled nature of the request (“We’re coming over for dinner: pick one of the following dates”), the response was heart-warming. Many of my dearest friends began filling our calendar, until every night of the entire two-week stretch was soon booked, baby!
It backfired almost immediately. Our first Reverse Meal Train dinner was at the home of John Silver, the captain of my hockey team. My toddler was so excited to be roughhousing with John’s older boys that he wouldn’t sit still for dinner and barely ate. When John placed a plate of spaghetti in front of him, my son looked up at him and yelled, “THANKS FUCK!” I have no idea where he learned that word.
After five straight nights of dinners out, my son and I felt like burnt toast. We decided to stay in for a night, but that resulted in my son “eating dinner” with his face two inches from a laptop, staring into a never-ending Netflix stream of Paw Patrol, which left me to Google the nutritional value of Cheezies.
We were back on the M-Train the next night, over at my dear friends, Chris and Lauren. Lauren made mention that she didn’t think my son looked so great, but I was already taking his temperature with an ear thermometer I had picked up at London Drugs. All good.
“I don’t think that’s an ear thermometer,” Lauren said. On closer inspection, it turns out it was a rectal thermometer that I had been sticking in my toddler’s ear for three days. No wonder he said it hurt. When I finally stuck it in the right hole, the fever alarm beeped like a reversing truck. Uh-oh. The Meal Train had reached its final station.
Thank you to the Yellens, the Kellys, the Silvers, the Thomases, the Rowans, Megan Barnes, Kim Bothen, and my sister and parents, for getting us through. It really does take a village. And penicillin.
