Partners in Parenthood

By Hugh O'Neill

Facing our son's teacher together showed us just how strong a team we are.

About a week before our first parent-teacher meeting, my wife, Jody, and I were driving home from the supermarket when she floated her concern about how I'd behave when we met Miss Dempsey, our son's kindergarten teacher. "Please don't get that way you get" she said. I said nothing.

"Oh, I can just hear you," Jody growled, warming to her indictment. "As soon as she says anything that is the slightest bit less than glowing about Josh, you'll ask her if she's ever noticed how the morning light glistens off his crew cut. Just don't go on about how lucky — no, no, how blessed Miss Dempsey is to have him in her class, okay? She is not the enemy."

What my lovely wife apparently didn't realize was that it was as yet unclear whether Miss Dempsey was the enemy or not. If, as I hoped, she was one of those teaching angels-on-earth — a woman who honored the unique energy of every kid — well then, Miss Dempsey would have no problem with Dad, except perhaps dealing with his excessive gratitude.

Cut to the big night: Jody and I are sitting side by side across a desk from the luminous Miss Dempsey.

"Josh is a wonderful boy" she began. "I feel blessed to have him in my class." Amen, I said to myself. The woman clearly understood the privilege she'd been given. "He's a great reader and a charming little guy," said my new favorite person. "There's just one thing I hope we can help him with: I'd like to help him connect better with the other children."

"I beg your pardon!" I heard someone say sternly from my left. "Josh is a very social child" Mama Bear snarled. My sweet wife was spitting mad.

As I watched Jody verbally slapping Miss D. for having the effrontery to hope that Josh might make a new playground pal or two, I realized that nothing would ever unite us more deeply than our passionate hopes for our children.

And I don't mind telling you that there in that classroom, loaded with teensy chairs and construction-paper turkeys, I found my angry wife thrilling. I couldn't wait to get out of there, so we could...well, let's say, discuss what Miss Dempsey had said.

By the time we got home, Jody was still fired up. Later that evening, she offered that she hated Miss Dempsey. I assured her that Miss Dempsey wasn't the enemy. I pointed out that she seemed to care for Josh. Jody replied with an unprintable and, unless I'm mistaken, sexist slur. I quickly shifted strategies, abandoning a defense of Miss Dempsey and suggesting that maybe the best way for us to stand by our boy was to love each other well — to assert, with all the energy we could muster, that we were partners in parenthood, forever united on behalf of our kids. After all, nothing invites a man and a woman toward each other more strongly than a shared venture that fills their hearts. And that night, with one of us inflamed by anger and the other along for the ride, we savored our sweet conspiracy.

Hugh O'Neill is the author of A Man Called Daddy, a collection of essays on parenthood.

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