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First Person: January 22, 1997
Together, a father and son weather the anxieties of unemployment BY VAN WALLACH '80 "Van, he's a baby!" Rachel snapped. I had reached the emotional nadir of unemployment, screaming at my own helpless, confused child. Losing my job had that effect on me. The structure of our family life, which always lurched from crisis to crisis, broke loose from its fragile moorings when, in August 1995, I got laid off from my job as a journalist. Eight years at the same company, one day's notice. "Today me, tomorrow you," I told the executive who had called me with the news. And to think that only two months earlier we had been so happy wheeling Sam around at my 15th reunion. Contract work for a market-research company held our finances together through December, but after that we spun in a whirlpool of terrifying uncertainty. Down and down we tumbled, existing on unemployment checks, Rachel's earnings as a freelance writer, our savings, and, finally, credit cards. The wretched winter of 1996 heightened our stress. Rachel and I tried to divide up child care, an impossible challenge with the three of us trapped physically and emotionally, buried under the snow, the garbage, the unwashed dishes, and unpaid bills. My job search began in December with no clear direction. To keep cash flowing, I decided to freelance while looking for work-a strategy that led to some dreadful missteps, such as a $15-an-hour assignment to do a lengthy business report for which I lacked both time and expertise. After struggling with the job for a month I gave it up, relieved but humiliated. This fiasco coincided with other acts of desperation. With Rachel forced to work more and the chilled walls closing in, we had to get Sam out of the house. We finally found an opening in a daycare facility in our town of Westport, Connecticut. Sam seemed happy enough on a trial visit there, and during his first full session, Rachel and I came home and smiled at each other over coffee at the kitchen table. Quiet moments. No needy toddler. Some space to gather thoughts, make phone calls, and consider options. It didn't last. At 18 months, Sam stood at the dawn of consciousness, able to grasp that something was changing, something he didn't like. Most children start daycare when they are infants or older toddlers. Sam was neither, and he was pathetically unhappy away from us. Rachel and I had both worked or stayed at home his entire life. Within days he refused to play. Instead, he stood in his coat by the door, whimpering, "Mommy's coming, Mommy's coming." Far from feeling at peace, we anxiously awaited calls from the beleaguered daycare providers telling us to pick up Sam early. His depression was upsetting the other children. We removed him from the program after two weeks. Next we advertised for a full-time baby-sitter. We finally hired an experienced, well-meaning woman, but because she would not drive Sam anywhere, she stayed with him in our house, causing a racket that made work in our separate home offices impossible. Since the offices lacked doors and were on the ground floor, Sam could charge into them (especially Rachel's) whenever the mood struck him, about every five minutes. The only respite came when one of us took Sam and the baby-sitter out-not exactly our vision of effective childcare. The futility grew, and finally one evening I called the woman to say the set-up wasn't working and she could pick up her last payment the next day. She understood. But not all was bleak. By this point my job search was beginning to show results, and a stream of interviews gave me hope that maybe things would work out. The weekly unemployment checks paid some bills, so I stopped freelancing, a smart move that eased the pressure and let me press the hunt. Fellow Princetonians responded to the TigerNet posting with leads and encouragement I will always treasure. With Rachel consumed by a corporate script-writing assignment, I assumed full childcare duties. No daycare, no baby-sitters, just me and Sam, "a bear and a frog in search of America," to quote a line from The Muppet Movie. Thus began the endgame for my five-year experience working out of my house. In 1991 I had set up a home office as a telecommuting staff writer for a trade magazine, confident that Rachel would soon become pregnant, and that as a stay-at-home dad I would fully participate in our child's early years. Instead, there passed three lonely years of fertility treatments before Sam arrived, three years of listening to Rush Limbaugh every afternoon and knocking back hot chocolate spiked with Kahlua, followed by two years of semi-hysteria as I tried to balance work, and then unemployment, with parenthood. Now, in my more relaxed and hopeful stage, Sam and I hit the road every morning. Our circuit could, with a nap thrown in, last until sunset: the library, a playground on Long Island Sound, the post office (where workers knew Sam from when I had lugged him around in a sling), Stop & Shop, and Tot Shabbat with 20 other moms and children at Temple Israel. We shared leisurely lunches at Burger King, where with a flourish I would reveal the movie-related plastic container packed with his child's meal. "Look, Sam, it's Pocahontas!" Many late afternoons found us at the train station. We strolled the platforms, and Sam shrieked with glee and waved when the rush-hour expresses flashed by. The long days could be frustrating (typical library plea: "Sam, can't I look at the big-people magazines before we go to the toy room?"), but I recall this as a profoundly satisfying period. Released from home-office pressures and anticipating several job offers, I lived according to Sam's rhythms and moods. I wasn't a journalist or panicked job-seeker. I was just Sam's father. My bittersweet freedom had to end. In May, I received two offers, with a third in the pipeline. I accepted a job that moved me beyond trade journalism to a corporate communications position in New York City. One afternoon shortly before my start date, Sam and I visited a beachfront park near the station from which I would be commuting. It was a good place to prepare Sam for the next phase of our lives together. Our special time was ending. I sat on the rocky shore as he tossed pebbles into the water. Seagulls wheeled overhead in the spring sunshine. "Sam, pretty soon Daddy will have to be on the train every day. I won't be at home all the time with you and Mommy. But you know I'll always love you and be thinking about you when I'm away." The little speech didn't make much of an impression, but that's O.K. I'm sure it reached him on some level. After all, he wants to be a conductor and ride the train every day, like Daddy. Van Wallach '80, a frequent contributor to PAW, lives in Westport, Connecticut.
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