Seesaw

You hear a great deal about how children change marriages. This, I believe, is inaccurate. Children do not change marriages, but rather bring a new level of awareness. They change your awareness of your marriage or your role in it.

Your dad and I have a pretty stable relationship. If you think of relationships as a seesaw, some people are at opposite ends, as far as they can get from each other. These work, of course, but because if their distance from the fulcrum, it can take a little more work to keep things balanced. Your dad and I are both pretty near the center, so historically, it's taken a lot for us to get unbalanced. We're so close to each other in terms of work, interests, outlook, etc., that we're like two people scooted right up to the center of the seesaw. If you ever try this, you'll see just how hard it is to shake things up!

And that was always important to me. I grew up in a culture that really values men and male contributions. I would like to think that you're reading this some distant day in the future and thinking, "Huh? What was that like?" but I'm not that optimistic.... It's getting better - when your grandma had me, she was told by her employer, "I don't hire pregnant women. If I can give your job away while you're on maternity leave, I will." So she only took eleven days off. That sort of thing would be a lawsuit today, but even so, when I was growing up, there was a real imbalance. The men in our family made the big decisions, even about things they didn't necessarily know as much about as the women. They sat down at the dinner table and waited to be served. When dinner was over, they went to the living room to lie down and talk while the women cleaned up. Women could be talking and one of the men would decide they had something to say, interrupt and just change the direction of the conversation. Your grandma and great-grandma took us shopping, weeded out our clothes, picked up birthday gifts for our friends, and just generally made our lives run smoothly.

Still, early on, I realized that there was an equation and that I was on the wrong side of it.
In some ways, I'm still not a very good "girl" because I spent most of my time trying to keep up with boys, but I decided that I wouldn't have this problem in my marriage. And I didn't! Your dad cleaned up while I fixed the stove and I cook and he does dishes. Tasks have always been fairly and evenly divided.

But one of the things I was completely unprepared for was the inherent inequality of caring for a child. Suddenly, it's as if I moved all the way out to one end of the seesaw and getting much momentum that way is next to impossible!

Don't get me wrong - your dad is a great dad. He talks to you, carries you, plays with you, and changes your diapers. It's just that babies consume mommies at such a primitive, biological level that daddies have a hard time keeping up. Things have to work that way. For you to thrive, I have to be aware of you constantly, making sure you're dry, fed, warm but not too warm, rested, safe, comfortable, clean, etc. I have to care for you to the exclusion of everything else, at least and especially early on. You see, I know you. I know by your breathing in the dark when you're happy and when you're working your way up to fussing. I know that sometimes it's not enough for me to hold the pacifier in your mouth, but that you also want me to let you hold my hand. I know which board books you like best, how you react when you really see yourself in the mirror, and that sometimes you bat your ears when your stomach is upset and that working your hand in tight little circles by your armpit means you're hungry. My job as your mother is to document and classify and react to all your little needs and preferences and dislikes. I'm evolutionarily blind to everything else and incredibly puzzled by the fact that every single person who comes in contact with you might not want to make the same study of you, to amass the little bits and pieces of the puzzle of who you are. On some level, I'm deeply offended that the entire world does not find you as endlessly fascinating as I do.

This, by the way, is what makes relationships between mamas and daughters tricky later in life. There will be a time when you'll begin to become your own person rapidly and in not knowing who you are yourself, it will make you uncomfortable to feel like I know you. So you'll try hard to make it clear to me that I don't know you at all, and I'll be a little hurt because it will be baffling to me how I could once have known the tenor of your every breath and suddenly seem unable to even guess your favorite color, how I could have loved you so carefully for minutes and hours and days and years only to be rejected so perfunctorily. But that's a long way away, and we'll get through that, because you'll keep remembering just how much I love you and I will know a version of you so basic and pure that we'll never really get too far from each other to find our way back.

But daddies don't work that way. That's probably biological too. In the wild, if two parents just sat around staring and staring at a new baby, they'd both starve. Someone has to be able to tear himself away and get back to the day-to-day grind. But suddenly, that means we're at different points on the seesaw, and I find myself sometimes very divided. Part of me is eternally grateful. Some men just get off the seesaw, leaving mamas to keep the whole thing moving by themselves, but your dad is working away to keep life moving smoothly, which in turn makes it as easy as possible for me to devote myself to taking care of you. Part of me is angry and frustrated, because I want him to come be where I am on the seesaw. I don't want to adjust to being in different places and having a different space between us than we've always had. I want him to take my new-found interest every bit as seriously as I do. And part of me is very sad for him, because as much as he loves and adores you, daddies don't ever have the same experience that mamas do. I can't imagine missing out on the gloriousness that is knowing you and watching you and being with you in the intimate way that we have of being together, I can't imagine that anyone else's interactions with you could be preferable to the ones I have.

So, you can see, finding your footing again after a baby is a lot of work! The seesaw has to keep moving - it's our everyday life, so it can't stop, but until we figure out just where to sit, it's tough. As your mama, my whole life has suddenly become you, and so there are times that I feel like I'm in charge of the whole seesaw. I get mad and frustrated to be doing all the work by myself. As your daddy, I'm sure there are times when he feels like keeping up with work and the house and making it easy for me to take care of you makes him feel like he's in charge of the whole seesaw too. It's a lot to figure out, and it's more than a little frustrating sometimes that the balance of something that was so basic and so steady for so long is suddenly all wonky. But all that imbalance seems a small price to pay for you, and we'll figure it out - new place to sit, new amount of energy, a new balance to strike, and a whole new viewpoint on a whole new world!