The stay-at-home dad: A sleepless Easter story

A sleepless Easter story

By TYLER WILSON

Coeur Voice Writer

Our family will be staying home for Easter this year. Duh.

Even without a pandemic, we don’t usually go overboard with activities or gatherings on this particular holiday. Beyond a few hidden eggs and maybe a ham dinner, Team Wilson keeps Easter low-key. The more kids you have, the easier it is to justify the lack of effort.

We did have one marathon Easter a few years ago, and it exhausts me just thinking about it.

At the time we had one kid - our daughter was a few months shy of turning two and my wife was seriously pregnant with our first son. It started as a normal day. After going to bed far too late (like always), our daughter woke up at the crack of dawn (like always) to hunt for eggs and dance around in her special Easter dress. Before the clock struck 9 a.m., it had already felt like bedtime.

Then my dad called. His father, my grandpa, had been admitted to the hospital and wasn’t expected to last through the day. Most of my dad’s extended family lives in the midwest, and there weren’t many options to get to River Falls, Wisconsin on such short notice.

Grandpa died just a few hours later. My wife still thought it was important that we leave as soon as possible, especially to be with my Grandma Rosie and to have her finally get to meet her great-granddaughter for the first time in person.

I procrastinated and wallowed in indecision for hours. Should we fly? Too expensive. Drive with my dad? He left town a few hours earlier at first word of the hospitalization. Our car at the time wasn’t in the best shape, so I asked a friend who worked at a rental car company if he could help us get a good deal on a minivan rental.

We decided to go. Me, my very pregnant wife and our sleep-resistant toddler. I remember driving across the Veterans Memorial Centennial Bridge on Interstate 90 and glancing at the clock - 3 p.m. We weren’t planning on stopping that night until somewhere on the far side of Montana.

Growing up, we would drive to Wisconsin to see my grandparents almost every summer. When it was just me and my mom (who was a schoolteacher and off in the summertime), we would take our time, visit Yellowstone and/or Mount Rushmore and stop at several motels along the way. Continental breakfasts and swimming pools along the way were my only demands.

For this trip, however, we were planning to stop just the one time. With a toddler. At some roadside motel in a random town in the middle of the night.

The first few hours went fine. Our daughter napped in the car off-and-on, and a couple pit stops to obtain McNuggets worked well enough to keep her happy.

It was well after 2 a.m. when we made it to the motel. Keep in mind, we were already working on minimal sleep from the Easter festivities. My wife and I were exhausted, as neither of us sleep well in cars (especially behind the wheel).

Guess who wanted to party in the motel room until sunrise?

Our daughter hopped up and out of the Pack ‘n Play for the rest of the night, babbling nonsense and doing her best to stir awake her zombified parents. We crashed hard, waking occasionally to offer a friendly “Ssshhh” and the occasional “Go the (expletive deleted) to sleep!” She talked and talked and we ignored her, eventually letting “Dora the Explorer” and Nick Jr. do most of the parenting in the early morning hours.

We only managed three or so hours of sleep before we continued our journey. This next day of driving was going to be the same amount of time, but at least we got started before lunchtime.

It was that second day when we learned toddlers don’t like spending consecutive days trapped in car seats. Even McNuggets couldn’t quiet her gullet. I don’t know when we made it to Wisconsin, but it had been dark for hours and I was delirious.

I expected the remainder of the trip to be miserable too. After all, we traveled across the country to attend a funeral. Even with all the sadness, however, it turned out to be one of my favorite trips. Grandma Rosie was thrilled to spend time with her great-granddaughter, and I shared laughs and memories with my cousins, aunts and uncles that I’d been missing for years. My wife and I were young, poor new parents, so we hadn’t seen these people in a long time.

We made the best of a sad situation, and some of my favorite memories of my grandmother (who died a few years later) involve her laughing and playing with my daughter. We even went to the Mall of America, a place Grandma Rosie used to take me, and she spoiled my daughter just like how she used to spoil me.

I missed my Grandpa like crazy, but at least my oldest got to make those memories with the rest of the family. I don’t really believe her, but she claims to remember many things from that particular trip. It’s probably just because I show her the photos, but either way, it’s something we share that I cherish, and I wish my other kids had had the same time with Grandma Rosie.

The drive home was absolute hell. But we did get a magnet at Wall Drug.