Tuesday is one of the days when I’m Trixie’s primary care provider, so I get to play Mr. Mom, or as my wife likes to call it, “Dad.” Trixie and I spend the day together while my wife works. When she gets home around six we have dinner, give the baby a bath and put her to bed. Last Tuesday my wife had to work late which meant I was on my own for dinner, bath time and bedtime. I don’t get too flustered by the tasks required of fatherhood, so it was no big deal. In college, I babysat my three younger siblings during the summers. The older ones were 7 and 8 and the baby was 8 months old one summer and 20 months old the next, so I’m no stranger to changing diapers, making bottles or entertaining the endless monologue of questions which can come out of kids. Naturally, it wasn’t a problem to feed and bathe my daughter. In fact, when it’s just me and her, I kind of love it because I get to make all the decisions. I think of myself as Lieutenate DeWitt. LieuteNate DeWitt is in charge of everything and things happen as he wants them to happen and on his timetable, dirty diapers, hissy fits, naps and other nonspecific baby meltdowns notwithstanding. My wife came home to find the house clean and the baby asleep. LieuteNate DeWitt runs a pretty tight ship.
This statement may sound contradictory to thinking of myself in military terms but my entire adult life is built around the premise that I don’t want to have to be somewhere I don’t want to go first thing in the morning. The idea of waking up and having to go into a job to work for someone else feels antithetical to liberty and murderous to the human spirit. There are 168 hours in a week and in America, you’re probably going to spend about 40 to 60 of them working if you want to be a middle class person who owns a home and goes on vacation once or twice a year. But I never saw any reason why these hours had to begin as soon as I wake up. I’ve tried to cultivate a life in which my responsibilities to other people don’t start until noon. This is probably white privilege, but we used to call it moxie, and I prefer to think of myself as having the courage to live life my own way and the savvy to make it work. That said, i wake up at 5am every single day, but I do it for me. I do it to meditate and write and read and have my coffee and exercise or lollygag and basically have a few moments in the morning before my wife or daughter wake up during which I’m not thinking about what I owe or what I’m owed, when I’m not worried about what’s next and when I’m not focused on my duties, I’m just focused on me. Sometimes, LieuteNate DeWitt shows up on these mornings and he’s a welcome site because he gives me the discipline to write or exercise, I needed him to get me to write this entry for example.
Wednesday mornings are my least favorite mornings because our lives are a mad scramble as we try to get my wife out the door to work and my daughter out the door to daycare. I recognize there are people who live every weekday in this mad scramble, I grew up in such an environment, and I’m grateful those are not the choices I’ve made because I flat out suck at that kind of life. Last week, after spending all day Tuesday on my timetable I woke up in the morning and got shit done, making coffee, doing dishes in full blown LieuteNate DeWitt mode. By the time my wife woke up at 6am, I was in a groove and going 100 miles an hour, making breakfast for everyone. There was so much to do! The baby had to be woken up and fed, dressed and her bag for daycare had to be packed. We had to write a check for daycare and feed ourselves. Then I had to drive to daycare with my wife, drop off the stroller for when my wife picks her up after work, and then take my wife to the train station before coming back home to shower myself then grade papers. Busy, busy, busy. Go, go, go! What a nightmare.
My wife and I go at different speeds, particularly in the mornings, particularly in the mornings after she had to work late. I was redlining and she was still warming up. But LieuteNate DeWitt had his marching orders and we were going to get out of the house at 7:15 come hell or high water. At about 6:30 the baby wasn’t up and my wife was still moving in slow motion, so I asked her to “Get with the program,” which went over about as well as you’d expect. I went to wake the baby and my wife got in the shower. When I got the baby dressed and walked back out into the kitchen, I noticed what I hadn’t noticed before. I’d been so self-consumed with doing things my way, I didn’t notice my wife had already gotten Trixie’s things together for daycare, packed her a bag and written them a check. I was so focused on me and my shit, I completely ignored the ways she was already with the program, already helping me out, a loyal soldier in LieuteNate DeWitt’s army. Co-Amanda DeWitt! (Like Commander? Sigh. I’m not as good at puns with other people’s names).
Tensions were still high between my wife and me but we got out the door by 7:15 so it’s OBVIOUSLY a good thing I scolded her and told her to hurry up. In all seriousness, we took the opportunity on the ride to daycare to make up in front of Trixie. I apologized and my wife said she appreciated how much I do for our family. We are going to argue, squabble and fight with each other, that’s not avoidable in a relationship and I think it’s important Trixie know that people who love each other can fight and still love each other. In order for her to understand that, though, she has to see us make up. The resolution between my wife and I can’t happen behind closed doors or after she’s in bed; to the extent that we are able, we need to resolve our conflicts in front of Trixie. Conflict will be part of my daughter's life inevitably, so too should resolution.
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