Chapter 8 - Part 1

Chapter 8 – Sam

When I was a kid, Clyde threw up on me once. I was so grossed out that I beat him up for it. I had started my first year of little kid Pop Warner football just the week before. When Mom found out that I had beat up Clyde she made me quit football. I wasn’t allowed to play for the rest of the year. I didn’t regret it, though. Clyde deserved it.

Now I had vomit all over me again – much worse than it had ever been with Clyde -- and I felt the rage boiling inside of me. I stomped off the ride to get away from Sonya. I had never hit Sonya. It was a low-down thing to hit your wife. I knew that. I wasn’t ever going to disgrace myself that way. Still, there were times when I had to get away. This was one of them.

There was a bathroom right next to the Teacups ride with outdoor sinks. I flipped on the water and started rinsing myself off as best I could. I stripped off my shirt and soaked it completely in the running water. I managed to get all the vomit off eventually, but now it was sopping wet – and it still stank. I hit the side of the sink and turned around to find Ken standing there offering me a clean shirt.

That stopped me cold in my tracks. Why was that man always popping up out of nowhere? I looked at the offered shirt and at the stinky wet one in my hand. I growled then threw down the old shirt and accepted the clean one in Ken’s hands. I struggled into it while Ken asked, “How are you all? Have you had a nice morning?”

“Ha!” I barked. “Does this look like a nice morning?”

Sonya had worked her way carefully from teacup to teacup and was now sitting queasily on a bench outside the teacup gate. She had her eyes closed and seemed to be concentrating on taking deep breaths. She still looked a little green.

“Why have you had a bad morning, Sam?” Ken asked.

“I just got thrown-up on! Can’t you see?”

“Why did Sonya throw up on you?”

“Because she was sick, I guess! I don’t know -- you tell me!”

“Do you think the ride made her sick?” Ken asked.

I stopped. Was he going to blame all this on me? “It is not my fault that she is sick!” I hollered.

“Remember when we talked about responsibility, Sam?” Ken asked quietly so the others couldn’t hear.
I looked at him for a long minute, two sides warring inside of me. Taking responsibility was what a fool did. But, taking responsibility was good. I had felt good when we talked about it. Taking responsibility made me feel like I could solve the problems that seemed to drop from the sky.

“Yes,” I finally said. “ I think the ride made her sick, but she didn’t have to go on the ride. She could have told me.”

“You mean, like how she told you she wanted to keep the blanket this morning? You would have listened to her and listened to what she wanted and needed and then acted so that her decisions were taken into consideration and honored?”

I scowled at Ken again. “Come on, man. Would you just get to the point? You don’t seem to like anything that I do.”

“Do you like it when your wife is happy?”

What was this? He seemed to be changing directions completely! “Of course I like it when my wife is happy.”

“I want you to really think about it,” Ken said. “Think about how you feel when your wife is unhappy -- and how you feel when she is glad. Does it affect your relationship?”

I didn’t want to, but I remembered a day with blinding force. I remembered a day when Sonya and I had gone for a walk. I remember marveling that she was so happy. She hadn’t been happy for a long time and I don’t know if there was even a reason for her to be especially happy that day – she just was. She had laughed and chatted with me and shown me the flowers that were starting to grow along the road. She told me some funny things the kids had done and she made me laugh. That was actually one of my favorite memories. Yes, I liked it when Sonya was happy. That was how I loved her best of all.

“Do you think anyone can be happy when their choices are being made by other people?”

“Well,” I stuttered, “yeah. I think sometimes other people know better.”

“Can another person really know the needs of another? Might there not always be some little buried desire known only to the person himself – or herself?”

“I suppose so,” I said.

“Do you wish Sonya had not thrown up on you this morning?”

“Yes!” I said adamantly.

“Then I think you had best start letting her take care of herself.” He studied me for a moment.

I was still confused. “I never told her she couldn’t make her own choices.”

“Does a person have unfettered choice if you inflict arbitrary consequences to punish her for her behavior?”

“But there are consequences for everything!” I insisted.

“Are they created by you?”

“What?”

“There are natural consequences, it is true, for many of our choices. Do you think Sonya and your children, too, know these consequences?”

“I suppose so,” I admitted.

“Then don’t you think you should let them be? You’ve done your part. It takes work to govern so many people, doesn’t it? Don’t you think you would be happier if you let them govern themselves?”

Ken considered me for a moment. “In the past, have you created your own consequences to inflict on Sonya?”

That could be true. I squirmed. Ken continued, “If consequences are artificially created by you, then are they necessary? In fact, aren’t they really measures taken by yourself to force another to do things your way?”

“I suppose they are,” I admitted again.

“Then, don’t you think you should stop?”

I looked down at my shoes that still had vomit on them and shook my head. When I looked up, Ken was gone.

I looked over toward the teacups ride to see Tom and Brittney watching me. Tom quickly looked away as I met his eye and instead turned to Brittney. “What do you say, sis? Do you want to try the teacups ride with me?”

Brittney gave Tom a smile. “I’ll ride it,” she said heading for the turnstile, “but I want my own teacup!”

Tommy laughed, “That’s okay with me! How’s your breakfast settling with you?”

“So far, so far!” Brittney called back, “And yours?”

“We’ll see!”

As they sat down, the ride started to slowly move again. For some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. Here were two kids who seemed to know more about life than I did.

Watching them laugh on the ride, I remembered watching them when they were young. Tom used to play with toy cars for hours at a time. I remember stumbling on him in play and finding a whole interstate system made out of books and rulers and odds and ends from all around the house. He wouldn’t even notice me as he intently drove his cars up and down the ramps and around the city he had created. Once, our dog had the audacity to walk through one of Tommy’s creations and boy did Tommy give him a verbal lashing – then he tossed him out of the house!

One day, though, when Sonya was busy in the kitchen, not long after Britt was born, I peeked in to see if Tom was busy with his cars. Brittney was in her baby seat in the middle of Tommy’s city. One main road went up the side of Brittney’s seat and down the other. As Tom pushed his cars up the road and then let them go to watch them speed down the other side, Brittney first giggled and then squealed with laughter. Tom loved that and as I watched, he completely abandoned the world he had created to jump and make faces at her – anything to have her laugh at him some more. His cavorting broke up the roads he had built -- and he didn’t care. All that mattered was little Brittney in the middle and the way she looked at him.

It would seem that even when Tommy was six he knew more about life than I did.

I turned and went to find Sonya sitting on the bench next to the ride. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her. “I’m sorry, Sonya,” I said. “I should have noticed that you weren’t feeling well. I mean – I should have asked if you wanted to go on the ride. Are you feeling any better?”

Sonya just put her head against me and started to cry. That was when I was really grateful for Ken’s clean shirt. Perhaps Ken could help me have a clean conscience as well?

I tightened my arm around Sonya. Had it really been that long since I asked her how she was feeling? I hadn’t meant to ignore her. I was just trying to get everything right for my family. I thought I’d had to do it all. Ken was saying that maybe I didn’t after all.

I just sat with my arm around Sonya for a long while. The kids got done with the teacups ride and neither one of them threw-up. “Of course not, Dad,” Britt said to me, “We each got to decide on our own spinning!”

I could only manage to grimace at her. She and Tom wandered off to look at the other craft booths while I sat with Sonya. I managed to find her a cup of iced soda and that seemed to help. I waited until she said she was ready before we both got up to go find the kids.