happy father's day!

Just a shout out to all the dads out there. Happy Father's Day!

There are some really wonderful Father's Day pieces up at Literary Mama this month. I especially love Sheila Squillante's "All Things Edible, Random, and Odd."

Enjoy!

a nod to father writers

In preparation for my Writing Parenthood class last Saturday, I thought I should shift my gaze (at least for a few minutes) from motherhood literature to fatherhood literature. I designed Writing Parenthood, after all, because I had received a few (subdued) pleas that I include men in my Mother Words classes. But you see, I can’t do that. Stories by men about fatherhood don’t seem to be clumped together (and discarded) in the same way that women’s stories about motherhood routinely are. Men are often applauded for writing about parenthood, while women doing the same literary work are met with a shrug. So while there *is* quality writing out there about fatherhood, I generally do not read it, and I reserve Mother Words for mothers alone.

But then I had this class coming up, and I knew I needed to include some male voices, so I reviewed essays I’d read before (some of my favorites: Philip Lopate’s “Delivering Lily” and Scott Russell Sanders’ “Beauty”) and I went out and bought the new anthology The Book of Dads: Essays on the Joys, Perils, and Humiliations of Fatherhood, edited by Ben George, which is full of literary super-stars, writers like Charles Baxter, Richard Bausch, and Nick Flynn.

I adore Charles Baxter, as you know, so I read his essay, “The Chaos Machine,” first. It’s about Baxter’s trip to pick up his son, Daniel, at college, and woven in is the story of Baxter becoming a father, the insecurity and struggle of trying to navigate fatherhood without a role model. (His own father died when he was eighteen months old.) This essay contains everything that I love about Charles Baxter—wry sense of humor, self-deprecation, stellar characters—and Daniel himself has added footnotes, commenting on his father’s narration, making corrections when the elder Baxter takes liberties or goes astray. (You can read the very beginning of the essay here.) I loved it. And overall, this is a really wonderful collection of essays. (Seriously, Richard Bausch? What’s not to love?)

So I opened my arms to father writers, organized my thoughts, planned my class, and then, wouldn’t you know, I showed up on Saturday and THERE WERE NO MEN! I wasn’t terribly surprised, and really, it didn’t bother me. Convened was a wonderful group of mother writers—smart, thoughtful, interested women—and it was so fun to be a classroom again.

Because I’ve been teaching online so much lately, I had forgotten (well, almost) how energizing it is to share a physical space with a group of women interested in the same things. I love teaching online, as well, but I do miss the spark of a classroom. I miss watching people’s faces. I miss the back-and-forth, the way one question builds on another.

And despite the fact there were no fathers in the class, I’m glad I read The Book of Dads. It would make the perfect gift for the literary dads in your life.

solid

Last night, D was reading Little House in the Big Woods to Stella, and I was sitting at the dining room table, planning my new Loft class, Americans Writing Across Cultures, which begins on Monday. I was alternating between working and watching them read because I need frequent breaks from the computer to let my eyes rest. (I had an eye exam yesterday, and I do, indeed, need new glasses. Hence the recent trouble focusing.)

D and Stella looked so precious, cuddled together on the couch, reading. Stella was listening intently, her brow slightly furrowed, and I was struck by how much she looked like me when I was little.

Whenever Zoë or Stella furrow their brows around my mom, she says, “That was exactly the look you used to get when you were little.”

I am a brow-furrower, and now that I am in my late 30s, I have a prominent line between my brows to show for it. Sometimes I furrow because I’m concentrating, intent on something. But often I furrow because I’m worried. (There is a direct correlation between my stress level and the amount of time I spend furrowed.)

As I watched Stella last night, furrowed in concentration, I had one of those pangs, those desperate wishes that she wouldn’t spend as much of her life—her energy—worrying the way I do. I so hope she can hold onto the playfulness, the confidence she exhibits in so much of what she does. But I worry—I admit it—that she will lose that sureness, and that she will begin to question who she is and her many abilities.

I know it’s early—Stella is still young—but ten years from now I don’t want to be sitting at the dining room table with her, wondering where her confidence went. I’m going to get a copy of Reviving Ophelia and read it now so I’m ready. Is that crazy? Has anyone read this book? Did it make a difference?

I’m also thinking that it would be wonderful if Stella and I could do a mother-daughter self-defense class. When I was in college, I took a semester of self-defense, and I remember feeling different—stronger, more sure of myself—after each class. One day after class, I walked into the restaurant where I worked as a hostess, and one of the waitresses said, “You look different today. Taller? Something’s different about you.”

I want my daughters to walk tall, to believe in themselves. It took me until my mid-30s to find solid ground, and I don’t want this to happen to them. Any suggestions?

Note that I am linking all books on this blog through Powell’s instead of Amazon until I’m sure Amazon is no longer discriminating against LGBT authors. You can read more about their censorship here and here.

daddy bonding

I never worried about D bonding with Stella. He was with her in those moments after she was pulled from me, when the neonatologists were checking her vitals. He was with her after they placed her in an isolette and wheeled her up to the Special Care Nursery, where he sat and spoke to her softly through plastic.

Thirty-six hours later, after the call to my room saying that she was in respiratory distress, D was the one who walked next to her through the long tunnel connecting Abbott Northwestern and Children’s Hospitals. He was the one who read to her in the middle of the night and who changed her diaper when the nurses said it was time.

All the while, I was nauseous, spinning in and out of sleep.

Much later, when we finally brought Stella home, D was the one who could calm her. I was often at a loss. Nursing was frustrating on good days and left me in tears on bad days. Since the moment she received bottles in the hospital, she preferred them to breastfeeding. I ended up pumping and pumping, and D gave her bottles at 11 pm and 5 am each day. There was no question that D and Stella bonded—they bonded immediately.

With Zoe, everything has been different. I missed out on an hour with her as I was being sewn up after my C-section, but we have been together almost constantly since then. She would love nothing more than to spend the day nursing and snoozing in my arms. And since she refuses to take a bottle, D hasn’t been able to feed her, to connect with her the way he connected with Stella. Much of the time we are together as a family is divided—he is playing with Stella and I’m nursing Zoe. I imagine that this is the way it is for many families when the mother is breastfeeding: the other partner feels a little left out.

I’m not really worried about D and Zoe bonding—they will find there way just as Stella and I have found ours—but it is a challenge to find time for the two of them to be alone together.

With all of this in mind, it was so interesting to read Jennifer Margulis’ new book, The Baby Bonding Book for Dads, which she co-authored with her husband, James de Properzio. It’s a lovely coffee-table book filled with photos of babies and fathers and tips for dads on how to bond with their new infants. (They also have a blog--check it out!)

Many of the things they list as ways for dads to bond—kangaroo care, diapering, face time, and feeding—were things D did with Stella immediately because of her prematurity and her stay in the hospital. But if Zoe had been our first, would he have felt left out? Would he have felt at a loss to connect with her? I think he would have, and this book would have been a perfect gift for him.

There are so many books out there for expectant mothers—dare I say too many? But there are few that celebrate fatherhood and the special connection a dad can have with his new baby. I think this book helps fill that gap, and it would be a perfect gift for the expectant dads you know. I even found in it some good reminders for me: don’t feel stuck at home with an infant, take the baby with you and get out of the house! I also had forgotten this: that when a baby “turns her face to the side, she’s probably telling you she’s had enough…” Zoe loves to be on the changing table, kicking her feet and smiling, but I forgot this cue and think I’ve been keeping her “playing” long after she’s grown tired. Oops.

How have your partners bonded with your children? Has the way your partners bond changed with subsequent children?