I can still remember, vividly, the day that my father taught me to ride a bicycle. We lived at the end of a quiet suburban street lined with cherry and dogwood trees, our house set back from the cul-de-sac by what seemed to me, at age 5, to be a very long and very wide drive, perfect for small bicycles, and my dad and I spent hours there together as I circled that drive, round and round and round, on my little bike with the big training wheels. On the day that the wheels came off, we left the security of that smooth-paved drive and went out onto the street.

Dad kept his hand on my back as I pedaled down the street, and he kept it there as I pedaled back up the street, and he kept there as I pedaled down again and up again and with every pass the pressure of his hand became lighter and lighter and lighter until suddenly I couldn’t feel it there anymore, and I was flying, all on my own, and I remember that moment, I remember it keenly, that moment of sudden, terrifying, exhilarating realization that I was on my own, that I was doing it on my own, that I could do it all on my own, and I turned my head to see where he was, and he was there, of course, just some distance back, smiling as wide as I would ever see him smile, thrilled, proud, because this was something we’d done together, this thing, this getting me to be able to do this all on my own, and he was prouder of me than I was of myself, and the cherry trees and the dogwood trees flashed by me as I sped along, not looking where I was going, and it was wonderful, wonderful. And then I crashed into the bushes on someone’s lawn, and I cried.

It hadn’t occurred to me until this morning, watching my husband teach Emilia how to ride her bike all on her own, that my own bike-riding lesson with my own father summarized our relationship perfectly, that it did, in fact, summarize parenthood perfectly, if one could overlook the banality of the trope of lifting parental hands from the shoulders of the child, inasmuch as that moment – the banal lifting of one’s hand, figurative or otherwise – is in some ways the moment, the moment that stays with us, parent and child, as the moment during which everything changes and yet becomes – in the very same moment – ever fixed. I can still feel my father’s hand on my back, I can still hear his footsteps running alongside me as I pedal harder and faster, harder and faster, speeding along, speeding away. And I can still sense him there, behind me, smiling, proud, watching me go.

This is what a father gives to his daughter, what a parent gives to a child; this what I saw my husband give to our girl this morning, this encouragement to fly, this promise to always keep his hand ready to catch her, this covenant of letting go and holding on, this pact of saying goodbye and never parting. This lived promise that is family, that is love.

I can still feel my father there, I said, and that’s true. I can no longer see his smile, because he’s gone, but I know that it’s there. I can still feel his hand on my back.

Today I saw my daughter’s father put his hand on hers. This is how life goes on.

———

(If you have HBO, you need to watch or DVR this film today and share it with the dad in your life. It’s a wonderful, heart-lifting and heart-yanking meditation on fatherhood and parenthood and the love that we feel for our kids and as I said last week at the film’s HBO premiere, it’s the kind of film that reminds you of things that you didn’t think you needed reminding about. Like telling your kids that you love them. Your parents, too.

It’ll be out on video next month. I’ll remind you about it then. You’ll thank me.

Now, go hug the dad in your life.)

My husband’s summary assessment of his solo camping trip with the badgers, from his Facebook page:

“Lessons from camping:

1) Hot dogs go with everything.

2) The five year old girl is really in charge.

3) One parent, two kids is a sub-optimal ratio.”

I’d like to say that I didn’t say ‘I TOLD YOU SO,’ but I can’t.

Wild rumpus: pending

Because I totally said I TOLD YOU SO.

Here is what I’m worrying about today:

1) My husband has taken the children camping.

2) In a tent.

3) Without me.

The camping itself isn’t worrying, I suppose. My parents took my sister and I camping all the time and it was awesome, and I love the idea of doing the same with my children. But, see, in that scenario, it’s a two-parent camping trip. I can’t imagine camping alone with my children in our backyard, let alone out in the wild. And not because I worry about all the dangers that wilderness potentially poses to children, but rather because I fear that my children – who sometimes, as I have said many a time, remind one of rabid honey badgers – will be too at home in the wild, and that the wild will call forth their inner feral natures, and that they will overpower their father and leave him tied to a tree or something while they race through the woods terrorizing woodland creatures.

And/or interrogating them.

The alternative possibility is, I suppose, that they will spend a couple of days working their inner honey badgers out of their systems, and I will return home from New York to exhausted and placid creatures who, after days of living in the wild without Barney and Dora and mac and cheese on demand, have come to appreciate the finer things of indoor life.

Or not. I’m guessing not. I’m guessing someone might need to send out a search party for my husband.

Happy anniversary to my beloved dork. I miss you.

*****

Today, more hospitals, more moms, more children, and, I’m sure, more lessons like this. A little less terror-driving would be nice, though. Fearlessness has its limits.

*****

Last night at the United Nations, Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, pledged Canada’s full support to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and the Global Fund. Thank you, Canada. I’m proud of us.

We still need to keep asking for support, though, all of us. Not all donor countries have pledged. Please sign, if you haven’t already, and please keeping passing the message along.

It’s Kyle’s birthday today. I’m not going to tell you how old he is, because I think that he’s feeling a little weird about that, and if the 21st century has taught us anything, it’s that there’s nothing weirdmaking that can’t be made even more weirdmaking by being broadcast on the Internet. So.

Emilia got him sticks for his birthday. She put a lot of thought and planning into that, and it’s important to realize – as she explained at some length this morning when she presented them, with great fanfare, which is to say, wrapped in ribbons and pulled with a flourish from behind her back – that they aren’t actually sticks, but tools. “Car tools,” she explained. “For your car.”

The largest stick is a tire tool. “It’s for when you want to get new wheels for your car,” she said, waving it in a circular motion above her head, presumably to illustrate the concept of ‘wheels.’ “You just poke your tires with it like this” – jab jab jab – “and you make a hole and then you get to have new ones.” The three smaller tools, she explained, were simpler instruments: “you use them to scrape the paint from your car” – she held it horizontally, gripped in both hands – “for when you want to get the paint off so it can be painted a different color.”

Kyle, needless to say, was moved and proud: his daughter invented a portable kit for car vandals in his honor, which really is every father’s dream.

“I’m going to keep this always.”

“You’d better keep it in your car, Daddy. But maybe I should help you with your tires, first.”

Her future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades – and carry lots of bail money.

… is unparalleled.

Happy Father’s Day, you.

*****

(And for my dad, best of men, always loved, always missed, this.)

I’m not sure what is funniest about this recent post at Salon: that Googling ‘bad fathering’ automatically prompts the suggestion that what one really wanted to search for was ‘bad mothering’ (because, as we all know, there are no bad fathers, just bad Google algorithms), or that the first time (ha!) this blog appears on Salon is as a screen-captured example of Google’s determination to put all the blame for bad parenting on mothers.

My husband will be relieved to hear that there’s no point in him starting that ‘Her Bad Father’ blog, seeing as I have, apparently, pissed all over that territory for both of us. He’ll also be relieved to hear, that, according to Google, he’s off the hook forever for every and any bad parenting decision he makes, seeing as it is, apparently, a Googlistical impossibility that he ever be accused of bad fathering.

(Which, while we’re on the subject: bad fathering? Why employ the active verb in a Google search? I suspect that a search on ‘bad fathers’ might yield different results. Turning my attention to that, however, would deprive me of the opportunity to say this: BAD DADS ARE THE NEW DRAG.)

(Thanks for all the warm wishes yesterday. Jasper seems to be improving. And the claw marks on my head are healing nicely. Need to sleep for, like, a week, though.)

… is the luckiest number, when you’re counting years of love. In such a difficult year, your presence by my side has been the most cherished of gifts, the greatest of blessings.

Love you so much.

Here is the paradox about parenthood and marriage: having children with the person you love gives you a bajillion new reasons to adore each other, a kerpillion new horizons towards which your hearts, together, can shoot, an infinity of moments over which your hearts can, together, explode into a burst of white-hot stars, but, too, it gives you a septillion distractions, a gajillion reasons to pass each other by on the stairs, a googleplex of moments in which you are just too tired to do anything but murmur love you and blow feeble kisses at each other’s cheeks. If that.

Having children with the one that you love deepens and broadens and enriches, immeasurably, that love, but it also imposes such a strain. The strain is worth it – so far beyond worth that it almost seems ridiculous to say so – but still. It must be acknowledged, because the strain is what tests our strength as parents and as couples, as partners and as lovers, and that we withstand the strain – that we feel the strain, push back against the strain, work with the strain, and flourish – is testament to our tremendous, amazing strength.

To mine, and to my husband’s, and to ours together. But especially to his. Today, especially, the testament is to him.

You, Kyle: you love me, and you love our children, and both they and I thrill you and amaze you and challenge you – how forcefully we challenge you – and you love us all the more for this, and for this, I am so grateful that I could not find the words to say so even if I tried.

Okay, so I tried.

Happy Father’s Day, you.

Before I had children, I understood that parenthood would be challenging. I read a lot of books about it, actually, because I was a little worried. Would the first months of my child’s life be like boot camp? Would I go insane from sleep deprivation? Was I going to be comfortable breastfeeding? Would I gag at all the shitty diapers? Could I do this? I was pretty confident that I could do it. I figured that I was about as well-prepared as any mother could be, and, besides, I was not in this alone. My husband would be right there with me, doing his share and gagging at runny poos. We would be doing it together, and together, we would be strong.

And then Emilia was born and it was, as expected, hard. And my husband was there, just as I had expected him to be, and he provided all the support that I could hope for. He provided all of the support that I could hope for, and more, and yet: I found myself feeling very, very angry. At the situation. At him. Mostly at him.

I was struggling with post-partum depression, which of course exacerbated things, but it was more than just a byproduct of the depression. It was a deep, almost aggressive, resentment that burbled up in my throat – burning, like an acid – and choked me, every time that he walked out the front door to go to work, or to pick up milk or cat food or whatever, his arms swinging freely, his keys dangling casually from his fingers. Maybe I’ll just stop by the barber for a hair-cut, he’d say. Or, I’ll swing by the grocery store on the way home from work. Or, I’m headed out to work; call me if you need anything; love you! The bastard.

He could just walk out the front door, just walk right out and head off to wherever, totally unencumbered, totally unburdened. He was free. I was not free. I could not even go to the bathroom without undergoing complicated rituals to ensure that the baby would not scream for the five minutes that I would be out of her line of sight (having failed to master this activity, I soon resorted to waiting until she had one of her two eight-minute naps of the day, or jerryrigging the baby carrier so that I could hold her and pee at the same time.) If I wanted to leave the house, even to venture the half-block to the bakery for a take-out cappuccino, I had to plot my outing like a military manoeuvre, making certain that my plans were in accordance with nap schedules and feeding times and stocks of supplies and the appropriate alignment of the stars. I was not free, and I resented my husband’s freedom with a fury that sometimes made me tremble. I was angry. I was sometimes not sure whether I was angry at him, or myself, or the universe, or all three. Usually I settled for just being angry at him.

Last week, the New York Times reported a story – originally posted on Parenting.com, later covered by Jezebel – about moms of young children feeling anger toward their husbands. According to the original story, nearly half of all moms who took a survey about anger reported that they “get irate with their husbands” at least once a week. Fully half of them described their anger as “intense.” Moms, the study concludes, are mad. Which, whatever. I could have told them that.

The story that I would tell about this anger, however, might be a little different than the one told in the Times. The Parenting.com story focuses on the imbalanced distribution of parental responsibility in most households, and their characterization of that imbalance rang perfectly true for me (“We carry so much of this life-altering responsibility in our heads: the doctors’ appointments, the shoe sizes, the details about the kids’ friends. Many dads wouldn’t even think to buy valentines for the class, for example, or know when it’s time to sign kids up for the pre–camp physical… We’re the walking, talking encyclopedias of family life, while dads tend to be more like brochures.” Yes, I said to myself, reading this. YES.) But I’m not convinced that that imbalance necessarily leads – must lead, should lead, justifiably leads – to rage directed at one’s spouse.

Is it really my husband that I’m angry at when I find myself trapped (yes, that’s how it feels sometimes) alone inside the house with a squalling baby? When I’m awakened for the umpteenth time in the night by a baby who won’t take a bottle? When my husband reveals that he doesn’t know when Emilia should visit the dentist, or when Jasper should go in for his next well-visit? When he complains about being tired or overwhelmed while I’m scrounging in the medicine cabinet for the Ativan? Sure, I feel angry – I sometimes feel very angry – but is my anger really directed at him? And if it is directed at him – should it be?

My husband is not – I am pretty sure about this – acting maliciously when he walks out the front door to go to work. And he does not actively try to avoid retaining certain information about the household schedule or the children’s appointments or how many Valentines Emilia needs to bring to school next week. Nor is he making a conscious effort to disregard how challenging things are for me when he complains about his own exhaustion. Sure, he’ll never be as exhausted as I am – nobody will ever be as exhausted as I am – but that doesn’t preclude him from experiencing his own sleep-deprivation-related discomforts. So why do I feel anger about these things? These things are not his fault. He’s a supportive husband and father, but he’s got his own challenges to deal with: his job pays the mortgage, his cooking skills keep us from living on soup and donuts, his ability to stay awake at night and get up early in the morning to wrangle baby is required to keep his sleep-deprived wife from going batshit crazy. This new household order isn’t a walk in the park for him, either. So why do I – and, presumably, half of the married mothers in North America – blame him for the seeming imbalance in that order?

My point: it’s not my husband’s fault that I carry most of the burden of responsibility for caring for our kids. It’s just the way that it is. I could blame him – and believe me, sometimes, in my darker moments, I do – but mightn’t it be more reasonable to blame society’s patriarchal hangover? Or even more reasonably: mightn’t I blame the choices that we have made as a couple, that I have made as a woman and mother? We made choices as a couple that established a certain division of labor in our household, and we agreed upon those choices. I’m a stay-at-home/work-at-home mom. The children are in my care for a far greater share of the day than they are in his. If he didn’t work, things would be different. If he lactated and could breastfeed, things would be very different. If parenting were just an easier gig, things would be different. I could justify my anger as rightfully directed at him if I felt – if I believed – that he just didn’t take the care of our children as seriously as I did, or if he actively shirked parental duty and left the burden of work unfairly to me. But he doesn’t, and so I can’t.

And my guess is that this is very probably true for many women. Pressed with the question, do you get angry at your husband?, any one of us might say, “hell yeah, I get angry!” Do you feel that you work harder in caring for your children, that he doesn’t do as much as you do, that things are easier for him? “Yes, yes and yes!” Does that make you mad? “YES!” But are we really mad at our husbands and partners, or are we mad at the circumstances of our parenting arrangements? Are we really a continent of enraged mothers, silently seething at our significant others, filled with justifiable rage at their failure to measure up to our needs and expectations? Or do we all just find parenting really, really hard sometimes – not to mention isolating – and so just fall easily into the trap of resenting our partners for not – from our blinkered perspective – having it as hard? When we talk about being angry at our spouses, aren’t we really, many of us, talking about being angry about hard this motherhood business can be, and about what a drag it is that the larger share of the burden of childcare has, over the course of human history, fallen to women? You know, as the ones with the boobs? Is this really about our own husbands at all? Or this about long-standing, world-historical tensions concerning divisions between men and women generally?

None of this is to say that my husband doesn’t f*ck up sometimes, nor that he is perfectly attentive to my every need as his parenting partner. Sometimes he’s just an outright doofus about things. And so I feel completely justified in feeling a teeny bit – maybe a whole lot – pissy when he asks why I can’t just go to sleep earlier, or maybe nap when the baby is napping, or when he doesn’t put away the laundry or when he says oh, hey, would you mind terribly if I just went out for a while to do whatever and left the kids with you? But the larger issues, the challenges and obstacles and difficulties that provoke real anger and deeper frustration: these are not his fault, and my emotional struggle with these should not be his cross to bear. This should be our shared burden, one that we manage, in part, by acknowledging that we both ache from the strain and and that we both buckle, sometimes, from the weight.

And then he should mix me a drink and rub my feet. Then we’ll be good.

Where are you at with this whole angry-at-mah-hubby thing? Are you one of the 50% of the population that’s filled with rage? Would a foot-rub help? Is it just me, or does even talking about mother-rage feel discomfiting? Like, if I had a good feminist household I wouldn’t even be talking about this crap because dude would have a prosthetic, lactating breast machine strapped to his chest and would be nursing our baby himself while I added a few more degrees to my CV and maybe found a cure for cancer? GAH. Maybe I get angry because I fetishize the inside of my own head. That shit’s tiring.