The Parental Leave Playbook

Chapter ThreePhase 1: Preparing for Leave Overview

WHEN I WAS a kid, my family would travel a few times a year from Denver to a small town where my mom grew up in Wyoming. About 20 miles outside of Cheyenne, in the stretch everyone simply called “the badlands,” you would begin to see billboards featuring penguins who counted down the miles until you arrived at Little America. In my child's mind, Little America was a high-class resort oasis in the middle of endless stretches of dirt, and the penguins enticed me to beg my parents to stop there. Each billboard was funny and novel, showing a penguin pumping gas, swimming, or wearing a hat. Each sign added another chapter to the story about what I could expect when I got there and reminded me of things I would need when I did: World's Largest Stations with 65 Gas Pumps! 150 Motel Rooms! Ice Cream! Swimming Pool! Then when I thought I could barely wait another minute, the magnificent final sign: Almost Home. These penguins made that long stretch of drive more bearable, cutting the interminable journey into manageable chunks and giving me something to look forward to, not just at the end of the journey, but with each sign. Instead of dreading an unbearably long journey to Wyoming, I left the house excited to see the penguins and quietly watched the roadside until the first one appeared, at which point I read it out loud and started my campaign to get my parents to stop. The signs told me exactly where I was and how far I had to go, ...