The Terrible Twos Make for a White-Knuckle Ride

For months my daughter and I had been the perfect driving companions. As if by mutual consent, we kept our expectations of each other fairly low. We sang a few songs, named a few colors, pointed out the requisite choo-choos and flowers, played a round or two of “Where’s Fiona?” in the rearview mirror and then lapsed into amiable silence.

Being my second, she was not subjected to the frenzied mania of object identification that my son endured--I no longer think my children’s academic future depends on my exclaiming about the color of every car we pass, and, frankly, I don’t have the energy.

Then she turned 2. Or rather, she turned 20 months, but for all intents and purposes, it was 2. Suddenly, she was a child of ever-shifting desire, yearning for contact, for silence, for her window to be up, to be down, for her shoes to be on, to be off, for a book, for her dolly, for her sippy cup that she had hurled to the floor four times in as many minutes.

And these are just the needs I was able to translate. As with many of us, the depth of Fiona’s longing often outstrips the limits of her vocabulary. She relies then on a low-level whine, a keening, really, that varies in key and volume depending on the circumstance. Words surface in this relentless river of sound but too often they are words that make no sense to me. They are recognizable--”sit down” and “my box”--but they do not seem to have any relationship to the situation.

And so as I am driving, I find myself engaged in conversations that can only be described as insane: “I am sitting down, you are sitting down, who do you want to sit down? What box? Your lunch box? Here, here is your lunch box. No? Then what do you want? Just tell me. What do you want?”

She repeats her requests over and over, and my voice rises and grows tight. I feel like a Parisian stopped on the street by an American who figures everyone can understand English if it is repeated often and loudly. I too want to rattle off strings of sophisticated phrases in French, turn on my heel and walk away, only my French is fairly limited, and I am just trying to get us home.

Forget driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol. It’s those of us driving under the influence of screaming toddlers who are the real threats.

Usually, I just turn on the stereo. I believe there are few situations in a car that cannot be improved by playing “Dancing Queen” or other tunes of my youth very loudly. My poor boomer husband. Every so often he salts my CD player with classical music and jazz in the hopes, I know, that I will not deaden his children’s musical palates. “I’m only listening to U2,” I tell him through the driver’s side window even as the final strains of “Come On Eileen” or “Tainted Love” hang in the air like illicit cigarette smoke.

Lately, however, music has failed me. The various beasts in the car remained savage, snarling even. For so long I have depended on car rides to provide me solace; both my kids do well in the car, and it is the only time I have that is not claimed by the physical needs of work or motherhood, the only time I have to think. It seemed supremely unfair that even this had now been taken from me.

The other day, I could feel a shriek building inside, and so instead of letting loose and startling all the elderly women waiting for the walk sign on Broadway, I pulled over. Pulled over and got out of the car. I don’t know what I was thinking--that I could just walk away from the whining crescendo in the back seat? That I could just lay my head on the hood of the car and wait for the child’s real mother to appear? Who knows. I just didn’t want to scream back at a 2-year-old. It is undignified and, more important, ineffective.

So I stood for a minute leaning against the car, taking comfort from the warm metal, and tried to think of a way to justify smoking again. When I couldn’t, I stuck my head in the back window to comfort my restless and irritable daughter. I did my best Groucho impersonation. I did my best Fiona impersonation. And then I broke down and did the Big Sneeze. For quick turn-around on toddler tantrums, it is difficult to beat the Big Sneeze.

Pretty soon she was laughing, and if people walking past thought I was insane, well, I am. But we made it home that day with no harm done, and that’s the main thing.

*

Mary McNamara can be reached at mary.mcnamara@latimes.com.