That She’s My Mommy

Beloved daughter,

Recently, there has been no doubt as to who your favorite parent is. Officially Mother’s Day was last Sunday, but in your eyes, it’s Mother’s Day every day. You choose Mom to cuddle with, Mom to do your hair, Mom to brush your teeth, Mom to take you to dance, Mom to pack your snack.

Part of your preference comes from your tremendous similarity with Mom. You both love to sing and dance. You’re both animated storytellers. You and Mom both spark with enthusiasm but are as sleepy as pandas. You both have an exceptionally high threshold for physical affection—or, rather, no threshold at all. If we didn’t have plans, I think you two might cuddle in bed all day. You have a certain resonance with Mom, like two purring cats, that’s just not the same with me.

Part of your preference may also be due to scarcity: you get access to me all the time. By default, I am the one who drives you around, makes your lunch, runs your bath, does your bedtime—all the humdrum stuff. I’m boringly abundant; Mom’s a precious mineral. I’m Crock-Pot chili; Mom is Slurpees at 7-11.

And part of it is our tendencies as parents. I’m more of a stickler; Mom, more of a spoiler. I lean toward “no, not now”; Mom, toward “sure, why not.” I pack you a fruit, a veg, and a grain; Mom throws in a candy and a sticky note with a cartoon dog.

You know, the more I describe it, the less surprising it is that you prefer her to me.

It hasn’t always been so. When you were a baby, no one could put you down for naps or bedtime like I could. I had the touch. There aren’t many arenas of life where I can say I am literally the best on the planet, but that was one of them.

I’ve also always served an important utilitarian function in your life. While you cherish Mommy, you depend on me. If you need to be carried, I’m the man for the job. If you wake up crying, I’m the first responder.

When you were smaller, there was a long while when you wouldn’t wipe yourself on the potty. Who’d you call on? That’s right. Dependable daddy. (There’s probably a Depends joke in there somewhere, but Mommy doesn’t like that kind of humor, and this letter is ultimately for her, so you’ll have to use your imagination.) For months, you had a charming (that’s parent-speak for obnoxious) habit of waking me up early in the morning, shouting “Daddy! Daddy!” from the porcelain throne until I groggily came to your rescue.

That’s my niche right there—emergency morning wipes. Mommy can’t rival me in that department.

I suppose my role, then, is somewhere between Superman and a plumber. I’m a fixer. Is there a problem? Call 1-800-HERO-DAD. For all other concerns, needs, and comforts, dial 1 for Mom.

I am exaggerating to an extent. You and I have loads of fun. We go on adventures. You give me amazing cuddles. By all measures, you adore your daddy.

It’s a matter of comparison, though. You’d probably rate me as an 8 or so. Mommy? Turn that dial up to 11.

One way I know this is that you tell me. If we ask who your favorite person is, it’s usually a tie between Mommy and one of your preschool friends. I’ve yet to be nominated. Maybe I’ll ask on Father’s Day.

Another way I know this is that I am capable of doing wrong, whereas Mommy is not. When I make a decision you disagree with—typically withholding or delaying your access to a candy or toy—you inform me of my grievous sin with a simple phrase: “bad Daddy.” Well, it’s probably spelled more like “BAD DADDY!!!!” The worse the offense, the more “bads” I am awarded. I haven’t had the composure in such moments to count just how many “bads” you’ve issued, but I am pretty sure the other day you called me a “bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, BAD DADDY!!!” Come to think of it, the reason for the reprimand was that I wouldn’t take you to see Mommy (who, by the way, was on the other side of town, with our one and only vehicle-—it would have required a six-mile walk at bedtime for me to become “good” Daddy).

By contrast, there is no such thing as “bad Mommy.” The phrase has never been uttered; most likely, it’s never formed in your mind.

I relay all this not to complain or petition. I don’t disagree with your assessment: Mom is an 11 on my scale, too. She is well-deserving of her spot on our lists of favorite people in the world.

Your preference for Mom may reveal something deeper, though. When I quit my job nearly four years ago to stay home with you and brother, there was a sense of egalitarianism about it: any parent, father or mother, is capable of caring for their kids and managing a household. At its core, there is no inherent reason why I as a father ought to be the main breadwinner, just as there is no reason why Mom ought to be the main homemaker. And that’s absolutely true. If ever a man does earn an 11 in your eyes, I hope that he does his fair share and more to care for you and whatever family you might one day create, in whatever ways you need.

But my experience as a stay-at-home dad has also highlighted the strong complementarity of parenting. As unified as we are, Mom and I live out our identities as parents differently. Whether we are acting out inborn gender differences or manifesting socialized roles or simply operating from two distinct personalities, Mom offers to you and brother a kind of love that is most concisely described as motherly. No matter how loving I am, she is more of the nurturing and empathetic presence in the family; no matter how gentle I am, she relates to you in a softer manner.

I don’t mean to say that I’m not nurturing or empathetic, nor that Mom is delicate or fragile. My best moments as a father come when I show you care and empathy, and Mom embodies all kinds of strength. But at a profound level, Mom is for you the very image of comfort, an incarnation of security and warmth.

The images she and I take on as your parents make me think of the multifaceted nature of the Trinity, a God who is at once a consuming fire and the prince of peace, who reveals himself as frightful, booming thunder and as gentle, unseen wind. Scripture describes God the Father disciplining us as his own children for our edification (Hebrews 12.5-11); it also compares the restored Jerusalem to a mother comforting her children (Isaiah 66.11-13). Again, I’m not aligning myself with the thunderous power of God; that is far from my aspirational image of fatherhood. But it does strike me that just as we gravitate toward different aspects of the divine, you gravitate toward different aspects of me as your father and Mom as your mother.

Of course, you’re not thinking about the Trinity when you say Mommy is your favorite. In fact, there’s nothing much to think about; she’s your Mommy, and you love her. It’s that simple. Earlier this year, for a Valentine’s Day project, I asked you and brother what you appreciate about Mom, and your answers were painfully nondescript.

“How would you describe Mommy?” I asked.

“She has brown hair,” you answered.

I tried a different approach. “What is something Mommy is good at?”

You thought for a moment before offering, “She is good at working.” Not exactly the kind of praise I was after.

I find that you are much better skilled at showing Mommy the size of your love than you are at explaining the reasons for it. You have no need for reasons; they are as self-evident as air. But the size of your love is something you feel. It overflows from your body in hugs and cuddles, leaps out of your mouth in a joyous exclamation of “Mommy!” when you see her, spills out of your hands in the form of drawings and cards and necklaces.

When I was fishing for Valentine’s Day material, I asked your brother what he was thankful for about Mommy. Though his answer remained nondescript in a way, it also said all that needs to be said: “That she’s my Mommy.”

What a simple and penetrating truth. No one else can fill that role. No one else gets to sit in that particular seat of honor in your heart.

One day you won’t cling to her like you do now, just as one day you won’t call 1-800-HERO-DAD so often. But you’ll always and forever have just one mother—your apple-of-your-eye, full-of-life, cat-like, hair-styling, teeth-brushing, dancing and singing, slushies on a Saturday, “sure, why not,” unparalleled source of comfort and love.

So at least for now, you’re spot on—around here, it’s Mother’s Day every day.

A Poem for Your Great-Grandmother

Beloved children,

As our family grows older—you’re 6 and almost 4, and I just turned 35—I would describe my experience of life as increasingly…echo-y.

You can think of an echo in terms of the source or the bounce-back. When I observe you taking in the world, I can’t help but look back to my earliest memories from those years—getting nipped at by our matriarch cat, Calico, wedging my head into the slats of our fence, moving from Indiana to Colorado in a boxy blue conversion van, reading my first book during kindergarten home-school with my mom. These and other imprints of my childhood were made when I was 3 or 4 or 5, roughly your same age. In that way, your experiences now feel like an echo of my experiences then.

Meanwhile, as a husband and father in my mid-30s, my life today feels somewhat like an echo of my parents’ when they were at this stage of life. When I turned 31, I reached the same age they were when I was born, and the older I get, the more my years overlap with the portion of their lives that I was present for. That cross-country move in the big blue van? That happened when my mom and dad were 35, a threshold I myself just reached. Arriving at the same milestones they once passed has increased my empathy for them, as well as my curiosity.

Of course, echoes imply a gap: there are no echoes without a chasm. Even if the sound remains intact, the wave carries nothing of the topography across which it travels. Likewise, even if I can transpose myself onto my parents’ lives 30-some years ago, and even if today they fill in some of the “source” material, largely I am left to wonder what their day-to-day experiences were like, how they saw themselves in the world, what kept them up at night.

And then there are caverns hardly mapped at all, echoes whose source is forever lost. When I turned 34 last year, I felt just such an echo.

Thirty-four is a significant age in our family. When my mom was a small child, her mother—your great-grandmother, Cherry—died tragically from an undetected brain tumor. She was 34. I have known this basic fact for as long as I can remember, but when I approached that weighty age myself, a somber curiosity overtook me. Suddenly I felt compelled to face a past I had never much wondered about. When I asked for details from my mom (Mimi, to you), I was reminded of the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction.

When Cherry died, my mom was 6 and her brother Les was 14. A devastating loss. Years later, after Les had grown up and married, his wife also suffered a tragic death, just days before turning 34. If that wasn’t eerie enough, Les’s wife had a daughter who was 14 at the time, the same age as Les when he lost his mother.

As you can imagine, 34 became sort of haunted, carrying the most chilling of echoes. When my mom herself turned 34, naturally she had a lot to process. Part of her assumed she wouldn’t see 35. What’s more, she now had a 6-year-old daughter of her own, casting new light on an old grief.

The story wasn’t done, though. In an amazing turn, on the 45th anniversary to the day of Cherry’s passing, your oldest cousin on my side of the family was born, and my mom became a grandmother. A day that had marked death came to mark new life.

And I suppose the story still isn’t done. Last year, I had my own processing to do as I approached 34. Despite your mother’s insistence on us doing something festive to celebrate, my one birthday wish was to spend the morning at a coffee shop to sit and reflect. Even before I’d finished the walk to the café, a poem was spilling out of me. What better name to give it than Cherry, my late maternal grandmother.

While this poem and the story behind it will mean very little to you now, I suspect that some years later it may take on greater significance, ringing across your lives as one among many echoes.



Cherry

I missed you for the first time today,
on the eve of turning 34,
the age you died
sixty years ago.
It’s hard to grieve
what you don’t know.

I miss you, the missing you.
The French say it better: tu me manques.
You’re missing from me.
Tu manques.
It’s hollow grieving
what you don’t know.

You are the grandmother I never knew,
the mother my mother must wonder about.
Where are you in her? In me?
In my son, almost as old as she was
when you passed?
We circle and circle.

For years, you were three earrings
in one ear, four in the other,
casting black spots
across my mother’s mind.
She feared and fretted—
then reached 35.

Her first grandson
was born the same day you died,
forty-five years later—
cherry blossom on a dormant tree.
It’s a heavy gift living
what we don’t know,

but still a gift, like the brilliant
sakura, shameless and brief.

I wish I could see you.

That may be this earthen life—
the wishing, the seeing and longing
to see, the gray hair never grown
tethering those before to those to come,
all imagining a place
where the blossoms never fall.

The Seventy-seventh Load of Laundry

Beloved son,

The night before your fifth birthday, you threw up for the first time in your life … and then the second time, and then the third. Hardly the best way to herald in a new year. Mom and I felt so bad for you. Your attitude, though, was incredibly cheery, buoyed by the utter novelty of it all. Your response struck the same tone as the android Data from Star Trek when he first learns to laugh: almost giddy with the chance to record a new human experience.

After your third visit to the toilet, I was settling you back into bed, my heart full of pity for my poor boy having to sleep with a bedside bucket. “I sure hope that was the last time,” I said. You responded wide-eyed, “Maybe I’ll never stop throwing up!”

I can’t say I’ve ever shared your enthusiasm for the experience. As a kid, I feel like I was throwing up every other Tuesday. I shouldn’t be too surprised; I ate like an idiot. In the sixth grade, I developed a reputation for having an iron stomach. Kids would pass a milk carton around the cafeteria, each inserting an ingredient of choice, and when the bubbling brew finally made it back to me, I’d close my eyes, stifle all rational thoughts, and take a swig. Cheers and gasps abounded. Then I’d head straight to the soccer field for recess.

Shockingly, this had a less than salutary effect. One fateful morning—and if you’re feeling queasy right now reading this, you may want to skip ahead a couple paragraphs—I had just sat down on the hard plastic stool of the cafeteria table when a foreboding salty taste came into my mouth. The string cheese I’d packed suddenly looked revolting. Uh-oh, I thought, not here. Not now. But yes—right there, right then. I abandoned my lunch and raced for the door. I wasn’t even going to make it to a bathroom; I rerouted toward the nearest trash can. Didn’t make it there, either. I made an epic display all over the linoleum floor, no more than five feet from the garbage can, and in full view of the entire sixth grade class.

Maybe my stomach wasn’t so ironclad after all.

Most of my stomach bug stories weren’t so dramatic. Thankfully, I was usually home to suffer their wrath. Even at home, though, I don’t recall any sense of novelty or excitement like you seemed to have. I recall the dread brought on by that salty taste in my mouth, like the black spot of nausea, miserable hours on the couch, trash can within arm’s reach as I awaited my doom.

But through it all I also recall one comfort in the misery: the salve of my mom’s steadfast care. In those awful bouts, she became like an angel standing over me. I recall her gentle hand on my back, her bringing me cool towels, offering 7 Up and saltines. I recall making messes that, I’d later discover, had been cleaned up as if by magic. I recall her sympathetic I wish I could do more for you smile.

What her face communicated was, in a way, true: she really couldn’t do much for me, couldn’t heal me. But those little gestures—and, most of all, her sheer presence—were powerful and sustaining, refreshing like a clear mountain spring. While the physical sensation of throwing up remains a distinct memory, just as enduring is the impression of my mother’s love, which seemed in those moments simply boundless. She would do anything for me, I thought.

I have similarly heroic memories of my dad—not so much around sickness, but around backpacking. In my teens, my dad and I went on many outdoor adventures throughout the far reaches of the Colorado Rockies. We’d wake up long before the sun, drive for hours, and then hike all day, or often several days.

When we returned to the car, exhausted and famished, would I, the youthful, athletic, Energizer Bunny of a hiker offer to drive? No. I didn’t even take a shift. Without fail, I would sleep like the dead while my dad drove the long haul back home. Sometimes my eyes would crack open long enough to glimpse a waterfall or craggy switchback, and before blacking out again, I’d glance at my father behind the wheel, seemingly tireless, a vision of indefatigable strength.

Indefatigable, boundless—are these the words that typify my experience of parenthood?

Generally no. Quite the opposite, really: I’ve been tired pretty much since the day we met. You know this better than anyone. Once when I was reading you the classic tale of Corduroy, I fell asleep mid-page and, in a dreamy haze, made up my own sudden ending to the story: “And then … he died.” Just yesterday I sleepily inserted an earthquake into Frog and Toad. These are not infrequent occurrences. I usually have to stand up to tell you your bedtime story, lest I doze off before you do.

Sadly, my fatigue doesn’t just result in silly storytime antics. It makes my fuse short, my patience thin, my grumpiness all too near the surface. No one witnesses more clearly than you just how bounded and fatigable I am.

And yet when you were born and Mom and I took on the mantle of parents, something infinite cracked open inside us. We woke at all hours of the night to feed and soothe you. We handled every imaginable bodily fluid without second thought. We carted gargantuan loads of baby gear around town and country. We budgeted for you, rearranged for you, splurged on you. We sang you countless songs countless times, reread books till their covers fell off.

If one could somehow quantify the amount of care that goes into raising a baby—let alone a toddler or child—the figure would be staggering. But of course Mom and I don’t quantify. There would be no point. We don’t do any of this for compensation. We don’t tally or clock in. Our role follows a different logic: we love you because we love you. Just as my mother took care of me in my sickness, just as my father drove those long solo stretches, Mom and I give to you happily, freely, without resentment or expectation.

There is a word for all that, of course: selflessness. Now I don’t mean to say that becoming parents made us saints. A paradox of parenting is that raising you and sister brings to the surface two polar extremes co-residing within me: my selfishness and my selflessness, both etched deep into my character. Being your father gives me so many opportunities to choose one or the other. It embarrasses me to admit that no one in my life frustrates me, provokes me, and brings me to the end of my rope quite so often or so efficiently as you do. What a strange byproduct of life together that you, my darling children and heart of my heart, get to see the worst of me.

And yet you experience my very best as well. In the thousands of little chances I have to show you patience, kindness, goodness, forgiveness, in the innumerable moments of your neediness that I am called to respond to, I get to shower you with the love of a father. I get to pat your back, offer you a 7 Up, clean your sheets for the seventy-seventh time.

Indeed, in my role as your father, I get to reflect the love of the Father. It’s the miracle that Paul describes in calling Jesus’s light “a treasure” stored within us fragile “jars of clay” (2 Cor. 4.6–7)—the infinite transported in the finite.

If my experience of parenthood is one of finitude, of limits and fatigue, on some level surely my parents’ was, too. But that’s not what stuck with me from my childhood stomach bugs or long mountain drives. What stuck was the image of strong, endless love—even if carried in faltering, limited people.

Perhaps, then, what matters more than my own experience as a parent is the image you take of me: a flawed, tired daddy who, thanks to a mystery greater than him, is able every so often to brim with an overflowing love.