Parenting 101

Her car is a cobbled together pickup truck her grandpa gave her two years before she turned sixteen and one year before he passed away in his sleep. There’s duct tape holding on the bumper from where she knicked the wall at the mcdonalds drive through and there’s so many stickers slapped on the back it might as well be considered a driving hazard for those behind her. She’d had it for four years now, though, and she never wanted to give it up, even as it whines and sputters and groans and attracts all sorts of attention as she pulls into the nice and tidy beige building in front of her.

Here’s the thing about your parents dying suddenly and unexpectedly in a boating accident: no one really tells you how to raise the toddler they left behind. Yes, you may love her and you may want to do anything for her, but there’s no field guide to deal with trauma and grief and a 3 year old who still asks when mommy is coming to pick her up. So sometimes you have to scour the library for parenting books and look through you moms phone to find her pediatrician and even pull up to the community center in a beat up old truck you don’t want to part with but know you have to because the car-seat won’t fit in it properly to take a parenting class you desperately need. No one told you to do it, but you have to anyway.

She grabs the flyer from her glovebox, scanning the paper again to compare the time and date just to be sure she hadn’t gotten anything mixed up despite the fact that she’d tripled checked already before she hops out of her car. She feels almost ridiculously young, trailing into the room after couples holding hands and smiling all soft and pretty like at each other, probably all in their mid to early 20s, looking eager and prepared. None of them are carrying a college-ruled notebook or a pencil, she notes with slight embarrassment, shuffling her old school supplies under her arm. There’s different tables set up around the room, a lot of the young couples are already hogging the front seats and Nancy can’t blame them for that, if she’d gotten here earlier she might have snagged one of those herself. Or any seat at all, since it seems she’d straggled so much she was left with slim pickings, hurrying to a seat near the back she practically fell into the chair, slapping her notebook in front of her and checking her phone the moment she could dig it out of her bag.

No notifications, which meant Evie was behaving so far. Evie- Evelyn- was her little sister, and Nancy had bartered with her coworker Amanda to babysit while she took this class. She’d cover her shift on Saturday morning in exchange for her looking after Evie for the night. Amanda didn’t usually ask for a favor in return for babysitting, but Nancy always liked to offer since Amanda and her wife both worked such different schedules, and if Nancy covered her shift this saturday it meant she and her wife would have some quality time together with their own child. Evie could be a handful sometimes, and Amanda had instructions to call if she got too much and Nancy would come pick her up- so no notifications was a good sign. Hopefully.

She jumps about a foot in the air when the man next to her says something- she can’t really understand it, smiling at him nervously as she tries to decipher what he just said.

He must read it on her face because she offers her a tired smile and clears his throat, obviously taking extra time to try and enunciate, “Is this your first class?”

“Oh! Oh, um, yes.” She nods, smoothing down invisible imperfections on her notebook with an awkward laugh.

He’s an older gentleman, maybe early thirties or late twenties at the youngest, his head feathers are cut short and choppy as if he’d done it himself, and he’s got a kind looking face- and he looks tired, bags underneath his eyes, and even his smile seems thin and weary around the edges, but there’s this brightness in his eyes that Nancy almost envies. He looks worn out but happy, almost. A single father? “You seemed nervous, is all.” He explains, “Are you expecting?”

“Ah, no,” She shakes her head and feels her bun bobble with her, “It’s- My parents-” She sighs, “I was kinda… thrown into this whole… parenting thing. I’m taking care of my little sister, she’s 3.”

He nods as if things like this happen all the time, “I know the feeling, after my sister passed I took in her kids, they’re triplets- oh!” He fumbles through his pockets, pulling out his phone to show her pictures, “They’re 7 now, about to be 8. Huey, Dewey, and Louie.” He points to them each individually. It’s a class photo, the other children cropped out so it’s only his 3 kids all smiling at the camera and color coded red, blue, and green.

She slides her phone over to him and shows him her lock screen, “This is my sister, Evelyn. This photo is from a year ago when I took her to the state fair so it’s kind of old, but it’s one of my favorites.”

“She’s so small!” he coos, “I remember when the boys were that small! She’s 3 now, you said? You must have your hands full with a toddler.”

Sliding her phone back she shrugs, “I haven’t been taking care of her for very long, I guess I haven’t had the full experience yet. She still thinks this is a long sleepover and that our parents will come pick her up soon.”

His eyes soften, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He’s startlingly sincere, and she blinks at him before realizing she needs to respond, “Thank you, uh..?” she realizes halfway through she’d never caught his name.

“Donald Duck.” He introduces, “And you are?”

“Nancy Pluckley, It was nice meeting you.” with the conversation coming to a natural close, Nancy fiddles with her notebook, and checks her phone again. The instructor seemed to be running late.

“So…” She starts and he turns to look at her, “We’re in kinda the same boat. How long have you been taking care of your nephews?”

“Since before they hatched,” It looks like it hurts him to think about and Nancy immediately regrets asking.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.” She rushes out, tucking loose hair behind the edge of her beak, “I’ve just never had someone who… gets it.”

“It’s alright, I don’t mind. It still hurts but I’ve mostly moved past it.” He smiled encouragingly at her, “Did you have anything you wanted to ask? I’ve gone through it all three times over.”

She spits it out before she can think twice, “Does it get better?”

“Oh, Nancy.” He says immediately, wincing at her and she drops her eyes to the table, suddenly very interested in the vulgar words scratched into the surface. She hears him take a deep breath, as if bracing himself, and then- “Yes, it gets better.” She jerks up, looking at him with wide eyes, “And that kind of sucks, And then it gets better again.” He admits.

Frowning, her eyebrows knitted together and she flattens her hands on the table, “What?”

“For me the hardest part… well, the grief was hard. Convincing myself to let go of the hope she would come back was harder, but I did it, and I raised her children even though it kind of felt like I wasn’t enough- and it was better… and then realizing I was doing an alright job… I’d replaced their mother, and that sucked.” it’s his turn to look down at the table, “and then it got better.” He says simply.

“But what if it never gets better? What If I feel like i’m not enough because it’s true?” She says miserably, running a palm through her hair.

Donald shrugs a little bit, leaning back in his chair, “Well… At least you’re there.”

She jolts, staring at him with wide eyes.

“I know, It’s kind of dark,” he says uneasily, “But take solace in the fact that you’re there, and that your sister has someone taking care of her who loves her with all her heart. You’re going to make mistakes, everyone does, but as long as you love her and do your best to raise her… she’ll turn out alright.”

“Also, if you can afford it, some therapy to deal with your grief in a healthy way will do wonders for your parenting.” He tacks on.

Dutifully, Nancy flips open the notebook and jots that down- he snorts out a startled chuckle and reaches over and takes the pen from her hand, scrawling his phone number in the margins of her paper, “text me if you need anything, Nancy. Maybe we can get the kids together for a play date! I’ll tell Louie not to involve Evelyn in any scams.”

Nancy huffs out a laugh, “I’d appreciate that.”

The instructor sweeps in right about then, tossing out apologies for her tardiness before the class starts in full swing. Nancy feels a little less silly about her notebook when she catches Donald making his own notes in his phone. The time seems to fly by and before she knows it, they’re being dismissed- it had been an informative class, and now she has a better grasp on the upcoming developmental milestones Evie was going to be hitting soon. She knew what to expect, and that was going to make all the difference- and Amanda hadn’t called about Evie all night, which meant she was being very good!

Nancy gathers up her things and bids a quick goodbye to Donald, eager to go pick up her sister- but when she goes to crank her car, there’s no roaring hum that lets her know her rust bucket is even trying to turn over. She tries a few more times, even lifts the hood to check out the engine with her limited knowledge- but it just looks like the whole thing has gone kaput.

Amanda’s car was in the shop which meant she couldn’t come pick her up, and all her other friends couldn’t babysit because they were busy tonight… which meant she was stranded.

Unless…?

She flips open her notebook at stares at the number, hesitant to call. He’d seemed nice enough during class, but what kind of guy gives a girl half his age his number within 5 minutes of meeting her? It was getting dark fast, and Nancy decided she was willing to take the risk. It’s not like it would be any more dangerous than walking home, right? And he might not even say yes anyway.

She puts the number into her phone and, after one last moment of deliberation, calls him.

“Hello?” His voice isn’t easier to understand over the phone, but she’s used to it by this point.

“Hey, is this Donald? This is Nancy, from the parenting class.” She stalls, scuffing her flats on the asphalt, “Um, what’s up? Are you doing anything tonight?”

There’s a bewildered pause from his side, “Nancy, um, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not… you’re a teenager and I’m way too old- I don’t like you like that. You’re not my. type.” he says awkwardly, obviously struggling to word it so he doesn’t hurt her feelings.

She slaps a hand over her face, flushing from embarrassment- well, at least now she could be relatively confident he wasn’t a creep, “No! No- My car won’t start, and if it… wasn’t a huge imposition, I was wondering if I could have a ride? Just to my friends house, it’s not far at all!”

There’s another long pause, “…I don’t really know you all that well.” He says hesitantly.

“Yeah… that’s, um, fair.” She leans back against her truck and blows out a breath, “I’m sorry to bother you, I’ll just walk.”

“At this time of night?” He balks and she can hear the sound of his turn signal.

“Yeah, well, I can’t afford a cab.”

“I’ll come pick you up.” he tells her, “I’m only a minute or two away.”

She looks around in the dark, “I think I’m the only one still here, you’ll be able to see me.”

“Stay on the phone with me until I get there?”

Nodding, she gets back into her truck, “Yeah, thank you, I was starting to get a little nervous.”

“And you were going to walk…” He chides and sounds so much like a dad it makes her a little upset it’s not her dad on the other side.

The station wagon he pulls up in is almost as beat up as her truck, and it’s got wood panelling on the side that actually makes her snort at how dated it looks. It’s a bit dinged up as if he’s been on the wrong side of several fender benders and there’s obviously been some work done on the drivers side door, two slightly different colored ugly teal paints layered over each other in a patchwork paint job. He hangs up as she opens the drivers side door and shakes his head, holding his hand out to stop her.

“Go take a picture of my license plate and send it to your friend.”

“What?” She says blankly, not following.

“Everytime you get into a car with a stranger- and please let this be a one off sort of deal, alright?- take a picture of their license plate and send it to someone you trust. It’s a safety precaution.”

She does as she’s told, snapping a picture of it and sending it to Amanda with a quick text explanation before rounding her way back to the passenger seat, “Is there… a reason I needed to do that..?” She asks.

He shrugs a little, waiting for her to get in, “It’s a good habit to get in, it’s something I tell everyone to do if it’s there first time riding with me.”

“Why?”

“I’ve been kidnapped a few times.” He says it as if he’s telling her about the weather, “doing that would have saved me a lot of trouble.”

She stares at his with big eyes before all the pieces suddenly fall into place, “Oh.” She breathes, “You’re that Donald Duck.”

Immediately he looks uncomfortable, shoulders hunching, and his eyes cut sharply to the road, looking straight ahead, “…Yeah. That Donald Duck…”

She gets in, strapping her seatbelt and wisely drops the topic, “So Amanda’s address is-”

There’s a long silence, broken only by his GPS barking out directions.

“Sorry about everything that happened to you.” She finally bursts out, quickly hiding the fact that she’d just been scrolling through his wikipedia page. He smiles a little but it doesn’t reach his eyes and he offers her a small nod, “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, why were you even at that parenting seminar? Can’t you just afford to take an actual class?”

“You didn’t get very far on the personal life section of my wiki, did you?” she blanches, rubbing a hand through her hair, “I was disowned by my Uncle after my sister disappeared, we’ve been estranged ever since and I haven’t seen him since the accident. I’ve been cut off from any financial aid from him.” he drums his fingers on the steering wheel, “I’ve been doing fine on my own, for the most part- I had a good amount of savings and I usually have a job. Baby sitters are costing me a fortune though.”

Nancy groans in solidarity, “Tell me about it! Sometimes my friends will watch her, but when everyones busy and I need to work I have to get a babysitter too.”

“Here’s some advice- when she’s old enough, sign her up for junior woodchucks. They’ll usually have an after school program that runs that’ll give you some time to finish up your shift or go shopping before you need to pick her up. There are also older kids trying to earn their caretaker badges- screen them and you’re good to go on a free babysitter for the night.”

“You’re like a wizard.” She admires, crossing her arms.

He rolls his eyes, “Please don’t say that within earshot of my Uncle.”

“What’s he got against wizards?”

“Everything.” Donald says, pulling up at the curb to Amanda’s house, “Here we are.”

She nods a little bit, “Listen, um, thank you, Donald. I was in a tight spot back there. If you ever need something, I owe you one.”

He waved her off before she even finishes her sentence, “Not necessary,” He dismisses her offer simply, “I know how it is. You still have my number, right? You Can call if you ever need anything.”

“Yeah… just. Thanks again.” She gets out then, closing the door behind her and backing away. She waves at him a little bit before she finally turns around and heads inside.

Evie screams her name the moment she opens the door and then dive-bombs off the couch and into her arms. Nancy laughs and thanks her quick reflexes that she didn’t drop her, swinging her around a little bit.

“Glad you’re not murdered.” Amanda laughs a little bit, putting down her book, “How’d it go? Is he cute?”

“Ew, he’s like, 40.” Nancy giggles, carrying Evie to the couch, “And he wasn’t a weirdo, either.” She tosses her onto the cushions, “Why don’t you go get your stuff ready, boog? Miss Janie will be home soon and then Miss Amanda will be able to take us home.”

“Don’t say ew! I’m 40 and I am not ‘ew!’” Amanda admonishes as Evie runs off.

Nancy isn’t sure why she doesn’t divulge Donalds true identity, it just seems… rude to tell. Regardless, she’s pretty sure she might actually take him up on his offer to set up a play date between Evie and the triplets. It was nice talking with someone who really understands her situation.

And if she can wring some single-parent advice from him, well, she’ll take what she can get.