The long ride

With telephone poles whizzing by, the Beatles blaring on the stereo, and my kids strapped in the back seat, I learned to be a father on the road.

Editor's note: This story is excerpted from Salon's new anthology, "Maybe Baby: 28 Writers Tell the Truth About Skepticism, Infertility, Baby Lust, Childlessness, Ambivalence, and How They Made the Biggest Decision of Their Lives," edited by Lori Leibovich. Based on Salon's popular series "To Breed or Not to Breed," the collection inlcudes 24 original essays from writers including Anne Lamott, Rick Moody, Kathryn Harrison, Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez and Rebecca Traister.

By Andrew Leonard

Read more: Andrew Leonard, Family, fatherhood, Life

June 17, 2006 | Dublin, California, headed east on Interstate 580 to Interstate 5, November, 2004

My kids are discussing number theory in the back of the minivan. Eli, 7, is explaining how multiplication works to Tiana, 10. Tiana's contribution is a short discourse on the role of the number zero, a digit whose awesome powers Eli considers "crazy."

This is going to be a good ride, I think. From the sound of their chatter, they are relaxed and ready to road trip. We have just begun a six-hour journey from Berkeley to my grandmother's house in Lakewood, a suburban city just south of Los Angeles. We are old hands at this jaunt -- we know every rest stop, gas station, and highway interchange along Interstate 5's spear-thrust through California's vast Central Valley.

Our rituals are all in place. The Beatles' "White Album" is playing on the stereo, because all road trips must begin with the sound of the jetliner that opens "Back In the U.S.S.R." We picked up some chicken wings and raspberries from the grocery store, and the food is carefully balanced on top of a small cooler wedged between their bucket seats, right in front of a garbage bag. They are cocooned amid a swathe of blankets, pillows, and favorite stuffed animals: "Lion-y" for Tiana, "Alligatey" for Eli.

The sun is beginning to set, because long experience has taught us that when you're trying to make good time on the Berkeley-Lakewood express, you start at twilight. The kids eat their dinner, and then they drift off to sleep, lulled by the familiar rhythm of the minivan's passage. And I cruise, my world comfortably and completely reduced to the contents of the car.

I never expected, before becoming a parent, that some of my favorite moments of fatherhood would arrive while driving 75 miles per hour between the stockyards of Coalinga and the Tejon Pass. Looking back, maybe it isn't so surprising that that is where I grasped some of the most important lessons on how to be a good dad. When you're on the move, you define who you are and what your relationship is with your co-travelers at every step. You learn fast.

But what I find really intriguing is not how I found out how to be a father on the road, but how my kids learned how to be my children.

Ascending the Altamont Pass between Livermore and Tracy, Interstate 580, spring 1994

The baby is sleeping. We hit the road just before nap-time, and we're going to see how far we can get before she wakes up and starts demanding attention.

We are outfitted for a major land-war. We have car seat, stroller, and portable crib. We have a diaper bag, canisters of baby powder, a vast assortment of rattles and a hefty supply of cloth diapers. (Our friends think we're crazy for taking cloth diapers on the road, but hey, we're from Berkeley.) In the rash exuberance of new parents, we think nothing of crossing the great state of California with an infant in tow. Sure, we won't make the same time we did when we were unencumbered -- but match us up against anybody else with a six-month-old and we're confident our record will be impressive. We think we know what we're doing.

It's the pre-minivan era, and we're driving a behemoth 1967 cherry red Ford Galaxie convertible, which is not exactly ideal for total baby comfort. The radio is broken, and the engine leaks oil, and you've got to check the water in the radiator constantly.

But we have style. We're feeling good. We're finally back on the road after several sleepless months at home, holed up with a newborn. Jeni and I have always loved to travel. We've backpacked in Southeast Asia, road tripped across the country, from Berkeley all the way to northern Florida, sought out the obscurest, most roundabout routes, and driven nonstop through the night in headlong marathons. Now, for the first time, we're finally heading out on a serious car trip as a family. We've got the provisions, we've got P.J. Harvey on the boom box. So far so good.

Jeni and I plunged into parenthood in much the same way that we hurtled into marriage. It seemed like a good idea at the time but we didn't give it a whole lot of thought. Kind of like hitting the road without knowing exactly where you are headed, but on the general assumption that it's time to roll. We knew we wanted to do it, but I don't recall extended consideration of why. One day, we said to each other, hey, isn't it time to start a family? The next day, Jeni went off the pill, and within a couple of weeks, she was pregnant. Somewhere, a switch got flipped, and we went from being carefree lovers to prospective parents.

The baby is sleeping.

I-5, somewhere south of Fresno, summer 1995

It's hot. The kind of baking Central Valley heat that is great for ripening peaches and almonds but is hell on a one-and-a-half-year-old baby who is sick of being in her car seat, suffering from mild diarrhea, and utterly unwilling to nap for one more second. The gas station in this benighted section of near desert has no changing table, of course, so an impromptu changing station has been set up in the back of the new, but already slightly battered, minivan.

We no longer bother with cloth diapers on the road -- it's all about convenience now -- but changing the baby is still a chore. And it's my turn, as well-proven by the glare Jeni gives me when I not-so-innocently ask who dealt with the last nasty diaper.

I am only slightly less grumpy than my daughter. We are making terrible time. Tiana only slept for half an hour before starting to whimper, and since then it seems as if we've stopped at every exit. She's teething, and we forgot a teething ring, so we tried to find one on the way. At one point she was howling so loud that we were forced to stop in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and wait, impatiently, while she played in the dirt on the side of the road.

I'm going to lose my mind if I hear Raffi's version of "Baby Beluga" one more time. Neither Jeni nor I have had much sleep in months, and our interaction with each other has been reduced to a series of militarily terse interchanges that deal mostly with logistics. Where did you put the diaper rash ointment? Stop the car. I have to breastfeed.

Just one and a half years into the age of parenthood, and road trips are no longer fun. They're tedious. Like so much of parenting a small child, they are drudgery, something to be gotten through, rather than savored. The first few trips with the baby were a novelty -- a learning experience: this is how it works now. But I'm not at all sure I like what I've learned -- how every coo of happiness from the baby is matched by a howl and a whimper, how much work it takes just to keep it all together. I long for the days when I zipped through the Valley, making just one stop at a gas station, wasting not one second. But my baby will not comply. Yes, yes, I remember all those warnings that after my child was born I would no longer be the master and arbiter of my own destiny. But deep down, I never really believed it. I thought I could outwit my kids, that my will would persevere over theirs. I miscalculated.

I'm ready for this road trip to be over. Two hundred miles from L.A. But it feels like 2,000, and I know that by the time I get there, I'm going to be too exhausted to enjoy it. And then it will be time to turn around and come back.

Next page: Short of sleep and irritable, you wonder, is this why I became a parent?