The Other Half of Who I Am

Mother’s Day, it turns out, is relatively simple for me. A well-deserved nod to the noble sacrifice, the giving over of identity, the universality of being the bearer of life. Then Father’s Day comes. Raven has taken Xander to a birthday party this afternoon — the mother of the birthday boy apologized to me, “I’m sorry for scheduling this on Father’s Day!” and I was quick to reassure her that our family life does not rely on a calendar to tell us when to appreciate one another, that Father’s Day just seems like a good day to avoid family-style restaurants where you see dysfunctional extended families spending obligatory and uncomfortable time together eating overpriced food served by stressed out waiters, when people spend $4 for folded pieces of cardboard to express threadbare sentiment. Or, maybe I was less cynical sounding, and just said, “Really? No big deal.”

And yet. Søren sits working hard at a card for Raven, because it is important to him, because he can, an expansive card, in matter-of-fact five-year-old generosity, two sheets of paper taped together to create an airplane with detailed windows and wingflaps, “We all love you, Dad” written on the back. I wonder if the association of Raven with airplanes in his head will be bittersweet for my oft-absent beloved, who is so celebrated on his return. I will call my father tonight, a little envious my sister got to go out to breakfast with him and my mom. And after two weeks of being the sole grown-up in the house, I cannot help acknowledging how our family balance relies on Raven and me together, our complementary values and ways of doing things. I resolve to look at the holiday with a little less of the cynicism (inherited, quite honestly, from my father!) and without the hydra of resentment about the unglamorous work of parenthood so seldom falling evenly, a resentment that seems to sprout new heads every time I think I’ve slain it. It isn’t today, resentment of my husband who is supportive in ways I didn’t know I needed support, who is giving in ways I didn’t know people could be giving. No, really, it’s resentment of the model of family given over to us, that the work cannot be shared evenly, two people working half-time cannot earn what one person working full time does, of the assumption, however correct, that I will always drop everything for the darlings, that the socializing of men doesn’t make them — well, like mothers. No, no, I will, I promise myself, think on these two important fathers in my life and acknowledge the gifts that each has given me as mother, as daughter.

I aspire to be my mother’s daughter, I rattle off the qualities like a shopping list — her resourcefulness, her sense of humor, her patience, her honesty and fairness, her assertion of her own needs in balance against those of others that has never gotten in the way of her generosity. She is a person who is always identifying what needs to be done and doing it. There is nobody on the planet I admire more, her company is easy and comfortable, and the only people who are bigger fans are probably my sister and father. But the inheritance from my father? I trace back to the squeak of the stool I perched on in his woodshop and the smell of sawdust and the conversation, the conversation as I trailed him up mountains, the conversation that picks up easily now that I can phone him during the day when kids are at school, in his first year of retirement. My father’s review of papers I wrote for school and of letters to my grandparents with helpful suggestions were how I learned how to write. The books he loved became books I loved, the music he loved became music I love. He sat in the car while I was in doing violin lessons, made sure my sister and I always had good instruments. I’ve always been proud to be his daughter, wanted to make him proud of me.

It’s not a clear division, that my mother taught me what I needed to be a mother, that my father taught me what I needed to be the writer and the person I am, because my parents parented together, made the major decisions together, and shared the work of raising children, as Raven and I try to. But I have different relationships with the two of them, and treasure them both. One of the more helpful things they told me after we had children was that the children did not need us to parent them in exactly the same way, that so long as Raven was consistent parenting as Raven does and I was consistent parenting as I do, the boys would be ok. I think that gave me some help in stepping back and letting the relationship Raven has with each of our sons develop independently of me, to recognize the gifts he has to offer them.

And that’s the other thing about Father’s Day — gratitude to the father of my children. I’ve never met anyone like him, and he makes me a better person. We are different people, with different things to offer as parents and spouses, and somehow that works for us.