My wife and I had an opportunity to go out to dinner the other night.
It was supposed to be like a "date." Just the two of us. No kids. No fries. No soft drinks. And believe you me, the prospect of having a meal without a cheap plastic toy inside made us happy indeed.
Generally speaking, we were just anxious to go out. Being the parents of three small children, we realize convicted felons get out more often than we do.
Specifically, we were anxious to cash in on a gift certificate to one of the finer restaurants in town. We had received the certificate as a Christmas present. Not last Christmas, but the one before that.
We hired a sitter. A fine young man who came to the job with an official Red Cross baby-sitting guide at the ready for dealing with our 16-month-old daughter, and a strong young back for dealing with our two 6-year-olds. We said our goodbyes, slipped out the back and were on our merry way.
It was to be a meal of elegant proportions. But it was not to be. As the waiter presented our wine, the maitre d' presented the phone. Not a good sign.
Our mouths, which had just been watering, went dry.
Between accepting the phone and putting it to my ear, I had ample time to imagine various kids falling from a variety of places with objects of varied sharpness in their hot little hands.
While imagining the worst, I tried to maintain an unwavering voice as I said, "Hello," into the receiver and, "Don't open that wine," to the waiter.
It was indeed the sitter, calling to say that our daughter had been weeping inconsolably for the last half-hour.
Appropriately concerned, I said, "That's it? -- No broken bones? No gaping wounds? No floods? No fires? No hostage situation? -- So why are you calling?"
He was calling because he had tried everything in the book to no avail. And it wasn't like he was imagining things. We could hear her wailing in the background over the phone. So could half the restaurant.
She was into the stage of crying where breath is haltingly gasped between sobs. The kind of performance that annually sews up an Oscar nomination for someone.
Reflexively, I asked the parental catchall question: "Is she poopy?" But when the answer came back negative, it was obvious what the poor little girl wanted.
She didn't want a sitter/pseudo/surrogate parent, she wanted the real McCoy, and she wanted them half an hour ago.
There is a school of thought that says we should have stayed and enjoyed our dinner. That the little child would never learn to live without us if we didn't teach her. That children are the children in the family and parents must be the parents. That no matter how their children scream, the parents must be firm.
We, on the other hand, went home. We attend the school of thought that says the time between a parent's being everything to a child and being chopped liver is a relative instant.
Besides, we couldn't imagine enjoying dinner with the image of our sobbing daughter in the back of our minds. And we couldn't afford enough wine to blot that image out.
So instead of going out to brie baked in phyllo, a fresh garden-walnut-currant salad and an array of grilled, steamed and sauteed vegetables with pesto, we went home to Pizza! Pizza! and a little human being's unconditional love.
MICHAEL M. ASHCRAFT is a free-lance writer living in Kansas City, Mo.