The stairs had always been slightly steep.<\/p>\n
I had noticed this when we first looked at the house, three years ago, before the twins, before the marriage had become what it had become, in the period when Derek and I were still in the mode of seeing possibilities in everything, including the steepness of stairs in a house we were considering. I had mentioned it then, said something about the angle, and Derek had said we would put a runner on them for traction and we had never put a runner on them and I had stopped thinking about it the way you stop thinking about things in a house you live in, until they become part of the landscape that you stop seeing.<\/p>\n
The fall happened on a Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
I was carrying one of the boys, Eli, in my left arm, and a burp cloth and a pacifier in my right hand, and I was also tired in the way I have been tired for five months, which is a kind of tiredness that has its own specific texture, dense and total, the tiredness of a body that has not completed a sleep cycle since before the boys were born.<\/p>\n
My foot caught the second step from the top.<\/p>\n
Eli was fine.<\/p>\n
I did not let go of Eli.<\/p>\n
This is the thing I want to say first, before the arm, before Derek, before any of it: I did not let go of Eli. My body made that decision before I could make it consciously, the specific instinctive choice of a mother falling, which is to wrap everything around the child and absorb whatever is coming with the parts of herself that are available.<\/p>\n
My right arm hit the stairs.<\/p>\n
The rest of me arranged itself around Eli.<\/p>\n
We reached the bottom and Eli was crying, startled and unhappy, and I was on my knees on the hallway floor with my right arm doing something that arms do not usually do, something that my mind was slow to process because the processing of physical pain that large requires a moment.<\/p>\n
He was fine.<\/p>\n
He was crying but he was fine.<\/p>\n
I held him with my left arm.<\/p>\n
He stopped crying before I did.<\/p>\n
My mother-in-law, Sandra, had arrived ten minutes earlier to help with the morning feeding, one of the arrangements I had assembled in the months since the boys came home, the patchwork of help that I had organized because Derek did not organize it and because the twins were two people who needed constant care and I was one person who needed sleep sometimes and who could not be in two places simultaneously.<\/p>\n
Sandra came from the kitchen when she heard the fall.<\/p>\n
She found me on the hallway floor.<\/p>\n
She called the ambulance.<\/p>\n
The hospital was two hours of X-rays and waiting and a doctor explaining what a radius fracture meant in terms of what I could and could not do for the next six weeks. He said it as gently as he could, the way doctors have learned to say things to people who are visibly sleep-deprived and holding an infant, but the gentleness did not change what it meant.<\/p>\n
No lifting of anything over a few pounds for six weeks.<\/p>\n
My sons each weigh approximately sixteen pounds.<\/p>\n
Sandra drove us home and helped me settle the boys and made tea and did not say what I could see she was thinking, which was that I needed Derek to step up and that she was not confident he would.<\/p>\n
I called Derek at work.<\/p>\n
He came home that evening.<\/p>\n
I want to be fair about Derek in the early part of this, because fairness is what I owe the story even when the story is painful. When he came home that evening and saw the cast, his face did the thing it sometimes still did, the thing that reminded me of who he had been before we had children, the thing that looked like genuine concern.<\/p>\n
He asked if I was okay.<\/p>\n
I said I had broken my arm and that the doctor said no heavy lifting for six weeks.<\/p>\n
He said that was a lot.<\/p>\n
I said yes, it was, and that I needed him to help me with the boys. Not for six weeks of full participation, though I could have asked for that. I asked for a day off work occasionally. An hour earlier a few evenings a week. Working from home on the days Sandra could not come.<\/p>\n
He rolled his eyes.<\/p>\n
The eye roll arrived before any words, which is its own communication, the specific body language of someone who has decided that a request is unreasonable before they have finished hearing it.<\/p>\n
He said he had a job.<\/p>\n
He said he was not going to sit around with the kids.<\/p>\n
I stayed calm.<\/p>\n
I explained that my arm was broken, that I was in a cast, that I was asking for help managing two five-month-old babies with one usable arm.<\/p>\n
He said moms don\u2019t get sick days.<\/p>\n
He said I had wanted kids and I could take care of them.<\/p>\n
He said it was not his problem.<\/p>\n
I sat on the couch.<\/p>\n
I sat on the couch with my cast in my lap and my son in the other arm and I looked at my husband and I processed, with the specific slowness of someone receiving information that requires significant processing, what had just been said to me.<\/p>\n
Derek had wanted children.<\/p>\n
This is documented not just in my memory but in actual documentation, the emails and the conversations and the specific evening three years ago when he had brought up having a family for the first time, had been the one to raise it, had said that he imagined himself as a father and that he wanted that with me.<\/p>\n
He had also wept when the boys were born.<\/p>\n
I was there.<\/p>\n
I saw him.<\/p>\n
He had held Eli and then Owen and he had wept in the way that new fathers sometimes weep, the overwhelming specific emotion of a person encountering something they had wanted and are now holding, and I had believed in that moment that we were in it together, that the team we had been becoming was going to continue becoming, that the babies were going to be ours in the way that things are ours when both people have invested in them.<\/p>\n
The months since had revised this understanding.<\/p>\n
He had not gotten up in the night once.<\/p>\n
Not once.<\/p>\n
He had not changed a diaper without being specifically asked, and when specifically asked had frequently produced a reason why this particular moment was inconvenient. He had not attended a pediatrician appointment. He had not bathed them or dressed them or sat with them through the difficult periods of cluster feeding that lasted two and three hours.<\/p>\n
He came home from work and sat on the couch and watched television and expected dinner, which I made, because making dinner had become another item on the list of things that were apparently mine.<\/p>\n
I had been managing this.<\/p>\n
I want to be honest about why, because the why is important and because I have spent the months since examining it without flinching, and what I found when I examined it was a combination of things: exhaustion that made confrontation feel impossible, the hope that it would change once the boys were older, the specific fear of a woman who has two infants and no income that the confrontation might produce a result she could not manage, and a residue of the love I had for the person Derek had been before the boys arrived, which had made me willing to extend more grace than the situation warranted.<\/p>\n
The broken arm removed the capacity for grace.<\/p>\n
You cannot extend grace when you have one usable arm and two infants who need to be lifted.<\/p>\n
I called my mother.<\/p>\n
My mother\u2019s name is Vivienne and she has the specific quality of women of her generation who have done difficult things quietly for a long time and who have therefore developed a practical efficiency that is its own form of love. She arrived the next morning and she did not say anything about Derek that required me to defend him or agree with her, which is one of the specific skills of a good mother, and she helped me through the days when my arm was the worst and the fatigue was the most comprehensive.<\/p>\n
For three days she came every morning.<\/p>\n
On the fourth day she had a commitment she could not cancel, a medical appointment that had been scheduled for two months.<\/p>\n
I called Derek before he left for work.<\/p>\n
I told him I needed him to come home by five that evening because the boys needed bathing and I could not bathe two babies with one arm.<\/p>\n
He said he was tired.<\/p>\n
He said he had come home from work every day this week.<\/p>\n
He said that I stayed home and did nothing all day.<\/p>\n
I sat very still with the phone in my hand.<\/p>\n
I had, over the past four days, while broken-armed and sleep-deprived, managed the following: the feedings, which with five-month-old twins happened every three hours day and night; the diaper changes, which I had developed a one-armed technique for that I would not recommend; the laundry, which had to be done because babies generated laundry in quantities that defied reason; the meals for Derek and for myself; the dishes; the communication with Sandra and my mother about their respective visits; a pediatrician call about Owen\u2019s persistent fussiness; and the management of my own pain, which I was managing with the minimum of painkillers because I was nursing and the doctor had restricted what I could take.<\/p>\n
Nothing all day.<\/p>\n
I sat very still for a long time after he hung up.<\/p>\n
And then something settled in me.<\/p>\n
Not anger exactly, though anger was there.<\/p>\n
Something colder and more purposeful.<\/p>\n
I thought about what I needed Derek to understand.<\/p>\n
Not to hear. Hearing was not the problem. I had told him things and he had heard them and had produced, in response, the eye roll and the moms don\u2019t get sick days, which meant that hearing was not equivalent to understanding and that the method of communication I had been using was not capable of producing the result I needed.<\/p>\n
I needed a different method.<\/p>\n
The specific thing Derek believed was that caring for two infants at home was not work. That it was nothing. That the person doing it was doing nothing, that the time was empty, that the presence of a mother with her children was a form of rest rather than a form of labor.<\/p>\n
He needed to understand what the nothing looked like.<\/p>\n
He needed to understand it not through my description, which he had already heard and dismissed, but through direct experience.<\/p>\n
I called Sandra.<\/p>\n
Sandra and I had developed, over five months of her helping me while her son did not, a relationship that was different from the mother-in-law relationship I had expected. She was on my side in a way that she had never stated explicitly but that was evident in every practical action, the showing up, the help that arrived without requiring me to justify the need for it.<\/p>\n
I said: I need a favor.<\/p>\n
She said: yes.<\/p>\n
I said: I need you to come at four tomorrow and take the boys somewhere for the evening. Dinner. A drive. Whatever feels right. I need them out of the house when Derek comes home.<\/p>\n
She said: what are you planning?<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m going to let Derek take care of the boys. By himself. For one evening.<\/p>\n
There was a brief silence.<\/p>\n
Sandra said: just one evening?<\/p>\n
I said: start with one evening.<\/p>\n
She said: I\u2019ll be there at four.<\/p>\n
Then I called my mother.<\/p>\n
I told her the same thing.<\/p>\n
She said: what are you going to do?<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m going to leave.<\/p>\n
She said: leave?<\/p>\n
I said: just for the evening. Long enough for him to understand.<\/p>\n
She said: where will you go?<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019ll come to you. I\u2019ll sleep.<\/p>\n
She said: what about the boys?<\/p>\n
I said: Sandra will have them for an hour. Then she\u2019ll bring them home. And Derek will be there, because I\u2019ll have texted him to come home on time, and he won\u2019t have any reason to think anything is different.<\/p>\n
My mother was quiet.<\/p>\n
She said: and then?<\/p>\n
I said: and then I won\u2019t be there.<\/p>\n
She said: is this a good idea?<\/p>\n
I said: I don\u2019t know. But the other ideas haven\u2019t worked.<\/p>\n
She said: all right. Come when you\u2019re ready.<\/p>\n
I spent the rest of the day in the specific preparation of someone who is leaving a situation temporarily and needs to make sure the necessary things are in place. I made sure the formula was made and ready, because by four o\u2019clock we had supplemented the nursing enough that Derek could manage a feeding. I made sure the diapers were stocked and accessible. I made sure the boys\u2019 pajamas were laid out, clean, where they could be found.<\/p>\n
I wrote a note.<\/p>\n
The note was not dramatic.<\/p>\n
I had considered dramatic but decided against it because dramatic invited a specific kind of response, which was the response of someone who felt attacked, and I did not want to give Derek the opportunity to frame this as an attack he was defending himself against.<\/p>\n
The note said: I\u2019ve gone to my mother\u2019s to rest my arm. Sandra will drop the boys home at five-thirty. Everything they need is ready. Formula is in the fridge. Diapers are on the changing table. Pajamas are on the dresser. They\u2019ll need baths tonight. Call me if you have questions.<\/p>\n
Just that.<\/p>\n
I put it on the kitchen counter.<\/p>\n
I kissed both boys.<\/p>\n
I told Sandra the plan and she nodded with the expression of someone who had been waiting for this plan or something like it.<\/p>\n
I said: you\u2019ll bring them home at five-thirty?<\/p>\n
She said: five-thirty on the dot.<\/p>\n
I said: he doesn\u2019t know I\u2019m leaving.<\/p>\n
She said: I know.<\/p>\n
I said: are you okay with this?<\/p>\n
She said: my son has been watching you manage two infants alone for five months with a broken arm and he told you it was not his problem. Yes. I\u2019m okay with this.<\/p>\n
I went to my mother\u2019s.<\/p>\n
I want to tell you about the two and a half hours at my mother\u2019s house, because they were their own kind of significant.<\/p>\n
I lay down on the bed in my old room, which my mother still keeps as a room rather than an office, partly I think out of sentiment and partly because she knew before I did that there would be evenings when I needed to come back to it.<\/p>\n
I lay down and I slept.<\/p>\n
I slept for two hours and twelve minutes, which I know because I woke up to my phone ringing and the first thing I did was look at the time.<\/p>\n
It was Derek.<\/p>\n
I did not answer.<\/p>\n
He called again.<\/p>\n
I did not answer.<\/p>\n
He texted.<\/p>\n
The text said: where are you.<\/p>\n
I texted back: resting my arm at Mom\u2019s. Everything you need is there. Call me if you have questions.<\/p>\n
He called again.<\/p>\n
I did not answer.<\/p>\n
He texted: how long are you going to be gone?<\/p>\n
I texted: I\u2019ll be home when I\u2019ve rested. How are the boys?<\/p>\n
He did not respond for eleven minutes.<\/p>\n
Then he said: Owen won\u2019t stop crying. What do I do.<\/p>\n
I said: check the diaper first. If it\u2019s not the diaper, he might need to be held. He likes being upright against your shoulder.<\/p>\n
Silence for four minutes.<\/p>\n
Then: he\u2019s still crying.<\/p>\n
I said: have you tried walking with him? He usually calms down when you walk.<\/p>\n
Three minutes.<\/p>\n
Then: this isn\u2019t working. When are you coming home?<\/p>\n
I said: how is Eli?<\/p>\n
A long pause.<\/p>\n
He said: asleep somehow. But Owen is losing it. This is really hard.<\/p>\n
I looked at my phone.<\/p>\n
I thought about the eye roll.<\/p>\n
I thought about moms don\u2019t get sick days.<\/p>\n
I thought about you stay home and do nothing all day.<\/p>\n
I said: yes. It is.<\/p>\n
He said: what?<\/p>\n
I said: it is really hard. What you\u2019re experiencing right now, Derek. This is what I do. Every day. By myself. With a broken arm.<\/p>\n
There was no response for a while.<\/p>\n
Then: just tell me how to make him stop.<\/p>\n
I said: you have to figure some of it out yourself. I believe in you.<\/p>\n
My mother appeared in the doorway with a cup of tea.<\/p>\n
She looked at me with the expression she had been wearing all evening, which was not quite smug but was in that vicinity.<\/p>\n
She said: how is he doing?<\/p>\n
I said: one baby is crying and he doesn\u2019t know what to do.<\/p>\n
She sat on the edge of the bed.<\/p>\n
She said: should you go back?<\/p>\n
I said: not yet.<\/p>\n
She said: when?<\/p>\n
I said: when he has had the experience long enough that it becomes a memory he can refer to.<\/p>\n
She said: that\u2019s well put.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019ve been thinking about it for a while.<\/p>\n
My phone rang again.<\/p>\n
This time I answered.<\/p>\n
Derek said: something is wrong with him. He\u2019s been crying for twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
I said: is he hot?<\/p>\n
Derek said: what?<\/p>\n
I said: feel his forehead. Is he hot?<\/p>\n
A pause.<\/p>\n
He said: I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n
I said: have you offered him the bottle?<\/p>\n
He said: he won\u2019t take it.<\/p>\n
I said: try warming it a little more. He sometimes wants it warmer in the evening.<\/p>\n
I could hear Owen in the background, the specific quality of his cry that I knew in the way I knew my own voice.<\/p>\n
Derek said: I don\u2019t know how to tell if it\u2019s warm enough.<\/p>\n
I said: put a few drops on your wrist. It should feel neutral, not hot or cold.<\/p>\n
Pause.<\/p>\n
Then: he\u2019s taking it.<\/p>\n
Then: okay. He\u2019s eating.<\/p>\n
I could hear the specific quality of Derek\u2019s breathing change.<\/p>\n
He said, quietly: I didn\u2019t know he needed it warmer.<\/p>\n
I said: I found that out at about two in the morning three weeks ago. By trying.<\/p>\n
He said: you\u2019re trying to make a point.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m resting my arm.<\/p>\n
He said: Rachel.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: when are you coming home?<\/p>\n
I said: how long do you think you can manage?<\/p>\n
He said: that\u2019s not funny.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m not trying to be funny.<\/p>\n
He said: they\u2019re my kids too.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I should be able to handle one evening.<\/p>\n
I said: you should.<\/p>\n
He said: I can.<\/p>\n
I said: I know you can. You just have to figure out how.<\/p>\n
He said: why won\u2019t you just come home and help me?<\/p>\n
I said: because my arm is broken and I\u2019m exhausted and I needed to rest, and you told me moms don\u2019t get sick days.<\/p>\n
Silence.<\/p>\n
He said: I said that.<\/p>\n
I said: you did.<\/p>\n
He said: and you\u2019re making a point.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m resting my arm. The point is making itself.<\/p>\n
He said: is this some kind of punishment?<\/p>\n
I said: no. Punishment would be leaving for a week. I\u2019m coming home in a few hours. This is one evening, Derek. Five hours. With your own children. With everything prepared for you. And it\u2019s hard.<\/p>\n
He said nothing.<\/p>\n
I said: imagine doing it with a broken arm.<\/p>\n
He said nothing.<\/p>\n
I said: imagine doing it for five months without any acknowledgment that it was labor at all.<\/p>\n
He said: Rachel.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019ll be home by nine.<\/p>\n
I put the phone down.<\/p>\n
My mother had moved to the chair by the window.<\/p>\n
She said: he\u2019s not a bad man.<\/p>\n
I said: I know.<\/p>\n
She said: he\u2019s a man who didn\u2019t understand something.<\/p>\n
I said: he had every opportunity to understand it before tonight. He chose not to.<\/p>\n
She said: men of his generation often believe.<\/p>\n
I said: he\u2019s thirty-four.<\/p>\n
She said: men of his pattern, then. Men who were raised to believe that the home was someone else\u2019s domain and that providing money was the whole of what was required.<\/p>\n
I said: we talked about this before the boys were born. He knew what I expected.<\/p>\n
She said: knowing and understanding aren\u2019t the same thing.<\/p>\n
I said: I know. That\u2019s why I\u2019m doing this instead of talking more.<\/p>\n
She said: do you think it will work?<\/p>\n
I said: I think he will either understand something tonight, or he won\u2019t, and if he won\u2019t then I\u2019ll have a different set of decisions to make.<\/p>\n
She said: what decisions?<\/p>\n
I said: the ones I don\u2019t want to think about yet.<\/p>\n
She said: Rachel.<\/p>\n
I said: I know. I know what you\u2019re going to say.<\/p>\n
She said: the boys need their father.<\/p>\n
I said: I know.<\/p>\n
She said: but they also need you not to be broken.<\/p>\n
I said: I know that too.<\/p>\n
She said: is the arm the only thing that\u2019s broken?<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
She said it gently.<\/p>\n
I said: I don\u2019t know yet. I\u2019m trying to find out.<\/p>\n
She brought more tea.<\/p>\n
We sat in the room that had been my room for eighteen years, in the house where I had grown up, and we did not talk for a while, just sat in the particular comfortable silence of a mother and daughter who have been through enough together that silence is a form of conversation.<\/p>\n
At eight-thirty, I drove home.<\/p>\n
Derek was in the living room.<\/p>\n
He was on the floor.<\/p>\n
Both boys were with him, Eli in the bouncy chair that we used for the evenings when we needed hands free, Owen on Derek\u2019s chest, asleep, in the specific arrangement of a baby who has finally settled after an extended period of not settling.<\/p>\n
Derek looked up when I came in.<\/p>\n
He looked at me for a long moment.<\/p>\n
He looked terrible in a specific way, the way people look after a few hours of active infant management without experience or preparation, the dishevelment and the exhaustion and the particular expression of someone who has done something hard and is still in the middle of processing what it required.<\/p>\n
He said: Owen had a blowout.<\/p>\n
I said: was it a bad one?<\/p>\n
He said: it was a very bad one.<\/p>\n
I said: he does those sometimes in the evening.<\/p>\n
He said: I found the extra clothes. In the bag in the closet.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: it took me three tries to get the new diaper on correctly.<\/p>\n
I said: I know. It takes practice.<\/p>\n
He said: Rachel.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I don\u2019t know how you do this.<\/p>\n
I sat on the couch.<\/p>\n
I said: the same way you drive to work and sit in meetings and manage people and solve problems all day. You do it because you have to. You figure out what you don\u2019t know as you go. You don\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n
He said: but you\u2019ve been doing it alone.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: for five months.<\/p>\n
I said: plus the pregnancy.<\/p>\n
He said: plus the pregnancy.<\/p>\n
He looked at Owen on his chest.<\/p>\n
He said: he finally stopped crying about twenty minutes ago. We just laid on the floor and I put on that thing you play for them on the speaker, the soft music thing.<\/p>\n
I said: it usually works.<\/p>\n
He said: how did you know that?<\/p>\n
I said: I found it at two in the morning about six weeks ago. By trying things until something worked.<\/p>\n
He said: do you figure out a lot of things at two in the morning?<\/p>\n
I said: most of what I know about our sons, yes.<\/p>\n
He was quiet.<\/p>\n
He said: because I\u2019m not awake at two in the morning.<\/p>\n
I said: no.<\/p>\n
He said: because I\u2019ve never gotten up at night with them.<\/p>\n
I said: no.<\/p>\n
He said: not once.<\/p>\n
I said: not once.<\/p>\n
He looked at the ceiling.<\/p>\n
He said: Rachel, I said some things.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: moms don\u2019t get sick days.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: you do nothing all day.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: those were.<\/p>\n
He stopped.<\/p>\n
He said: those were not things I should have said.<\/p>\n
I said: no.<\/p>\n
He said: they were wrong.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: factually wrong. I know that now in a way I didn\u2019t know it before. Five hours. Five hours and I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He stopped again.<\/p>\n
He said: I couldn\u2019t manage a blowout diaper without three tries and I couldn\u2019t make Owen stop crying for forty minutes and I didn\u2019t know the bottle needed to be warmer and I didn\u2019t know about the music.<\/p>\n
He said: and you know all of that because you figured it out alone.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: while I was coming home and sitting on the couch.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: and I told you it was nothing.<\/p>\n
I said: you did.<\/p>\n
He was very still.<\/p>\n
Eli made a small sound from the bouncy chair.<\/p>\n
Derek looked at him.<\/p>\n
He said: can you tell me something?<\/p>\n
I said: what?<\/p>\n
He said: in those five months. What were the hardest nights?<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
He said: I want to know. I\u2019m asking.<\/p>\n
I said: the sixth week. When they were both sick and neither of them could keep anything down and I was up from eleven at night until four in the morning changing sheets and washing clothes and trying to keep them hydrated and by the time they were both back to sleep I had forty minutes before they were awake again for the morning feeding.<\/p>\n
I said: you slept through all of it.<\/p>\n
He said: I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
I said: you would have known if you had been awake.<\/p>\n
He said: I know.<\/p>\n
I said: and then last month, when my milk supply dropped and I was afraid it was going to stop entirely and I spent three days crying every time I nursed because the pressure to keep it going was so much and I was so tired and there was no one to talk to about it at two in the morning except the internet.<\/p>\n
He said: I didn\u2019t know about that either.<\/p>\n
I said: no.<\/p>\n
He said: why didn\u2019t you tell me?<\/p>\n
I said: because I had tried telling you things and you responded by rolling your eyes. After a while, you stop trying to explain things to someone who isn\u2019t listening.<\/p>\n
He said: I stopped listening.<\/p>\n
I said: you were never really listening.<\/p>\n
He said: that\u2019s.<\/p>\n
He said: that\u2019s hard to hear.<\/p>\n
I said: I imagine it is.<\/p>\n
He said: but it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
Owen moved on his chest, making the small sounds of a sleeping baby who is cycling through a lighter phase of sleep, and Derek adjusted his hand automatically, the instinctive response of someone who has spent an evening learning what the sounds meant.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019ve been an idiot.<\/p>\n
I said: you\u2019ve been absent.<\/p>\n
He said: that\u2019s a kinder word than what I deserve.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m not interested in being unkind. I\u2019m interested in something changing.<\/p>\n
He said: what do you need to change?<\/p>\n
I said: I need you to get up with them at night. Starting tonight.<\/p>\n
He said: okay.<\/p>\n
I said: not once, not when it\u2019s convenient. Every other night. We take turns.<\/p>\n
He said: okay.<\/p>\n
I said: I need you to take them to appointments. Sandra can give you the schedule.<\/p>\n
He said: okay.<\/p>\n
I said: I need you to come home at a reasonable time and help with the evening routine without being asked. Without treating it as a favor you\u2019re doing me.<\/p>\n
He said: okay.<\/p>\n
I said: and I need you to understand something.<\/p>\n
He said: what?<\/p>\n
I said: this is not babysitting. This is parenting. There is no version of this where you are doing me a favor when you take care of your own children. They are yours and they are mine and the work of them is shared. That\u2019s what we agreed to when we decided to have them.<\/p>\n
He said: we agreed to that.<\/p>\n
I said: we did.<\/p>\n
He said: I forgot.<\/p>\n
I said: you didn\u2019t forget. You chose to reinterpret.<\/p>\n
He said: yes.<\/p>\n
I said: I need you not to reinterpret it again.<\/p>\n
He said: I won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He said: Rachel.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n
I said: I hear you.<\/p>\n
He said: is that enough?<\/p>\n
I said: it\u2019s a start.<\/p>\n
He said: what else do I need to do?<\/p>\n
I said: the rest of it, I think you already know. You showed some of it tonight.<\/p>\n
He said: figuring out the bottle temperature alone isn\u2019t the same as.<\/p>\n
I said: no. But it\u2019s the beginning of the figuring out. You do it the same way I did it. By paying attention. By trying things. By not having someone available to just fix it for you.<\/p>\n
He said: it\u2019s harder than I thought.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I thought you were exaggerating.<\/p>\n
I said: when?<\/p>\n
He said: when you said you were exhausted. I thought. I don\u2019t know. I thought you meant tired in the normal way. I didn\u2019t understand what exhausted actually meant in this context.<\/p>\n
I said: and now?<\/p>\n
He said: I understand it\u2019s different.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
Eli had fallen asleep in the bouncy chair, his head tilted in the specific way that babies fall asleep, the complete total surrender of an infant to unconsciousness.<\/p>\n
Derek said: how do I get Owen upstairs without waking him?<\/p>\n
I said: very slowly. Keep him against your shoulder, support his head, don\u2019t stop moving.<\/p>\n
He said: will you.<\/p>\n
He stopped.<\/p>\n
He said: I was going to ask if you could do it.<\/p>\n
I said: my arm.<\/p>\n
He said: right. I\u2019ll do it.<\/p>\n
He stood with the specific careful slowness I had described, keeping Owen against his shoulder, and he moved toward the stairs.<\/p>\n
He stopped at the bottom.<\/p>\n
He said: the stairs. Should we put a runner on these?<\/p>\n
I said: we should definitely put a runner on these.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019ll get one tomorrow.<\/p>\n
He went up the stairs.<\/p>\n
I sat on the couch.<\/p>\n
I could hear him in the nursery, the sounds of the room at night when someone is in it trying to be quiet, the soft thuds of careful movement.<\/p>\n
Then he came back down.<\/p>\n
He said: he\u2019s down.<\/p>\n
I said: good.<\/p>\n
He picked up Eli from the bouncy chair with the beginners\u2019 carefulness of someone who is still learning the correct way to hold this specific person.<\/p>\n
He went back upstairs.<\/p>\n
I sat on the couch.<\/p>\n
I looked at the living room, which had the particular quality of a room that has been used by someone who was not accustomed to using it in this way, the slight disorder of an evening spent managing two infants alone.<\/p>\n
He came back down.<\/p>\n
He said: they\u2019re both down.<\/p>\n
He sat beside me on the couch.<\/p>\n
We sat for a while.<\/p>\n
He said: how long have you been waiting to do that?<\/p>\n
I said: I didn\u2019t plan it until today.<\/p>\n
He said: but you\u2019ve been waiting.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019ve been hoping something else would work first.<\/p>\n
He said: nothing else did.<\/p>\n
I said: no.<\/p>\n
He said: would you have left?<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m here.<\/p>\n
He said: if tonight hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He stopped.<\/p>\n
He said: if I hadn\u2019t understood. Would you have left?<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
I said: I was going to have to make decisions that I don\u2019t want to make.<\/p>\n
He said: Rachel.<\/p>\n
I said: Derek.<\/p>\n
He said: I don\u2019t want you to leave.<\/p>\n
I said: I know.<\/p>\n
He said: I don\u2019t want them to grow up without.<\/p>\n
He stopped.<\/p>\n
He said: in that nursery just now. I was putting Owen down and I thought about. I thought about him growing up and not having me there every day. Not knowing how he takes his bottle. Not knowing about the music.<\/p>\n
He said: I thought about him not knowing me.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: that was a hard thought.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019ve been making it possible.<\/p>\n
I said: yes. You\u2019ve been making it possible.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019m going to stop.<\/p>\n
I said: I\u2019m going to need to see that.<\/p>\n
He said: I know. I know sorry isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
I said: it\u2019s a beginning. What comes after is what matters.<\/p>\n
He said: I get up at two?<\/p>\n
I said: we\u2019ll divide it. Tonight is mine. Tomorrow night is yours.<\/p>\n
He said: okay.<\/p>\n
He said: I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n
I said: I know. You\u2019ll figure it out. It only takes a little while to learn the things that matter, if you\u2019re paying attention.<\/p>\n
He said: will you. If I have a question.<\/p>\n
I said: yes. I\u2019ll answer.<\/p>\n
He said: even at two in the morning?<\/p>\n
I said: even at two.<\/p>\n
He said: thank you.<\/p>\n
I said: it\u2019s not a favor. It\u2019s our family.<\/p>\n
He said: yes.<\/p>\n
He was quiet for a moment.<\/p>\n
He said: I want to know the other hard nights.<\/p>\n
I said: what?<\/p>\n
He said: you told me about the sixth week and about last month. I want to know the others. The ones I slept through.<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
He said: I want to know what I missed.<\/p>\n
I said: it\u2019ll take a while.<\/p>\n
He said: we have time.<\/p>\n
I said: the boys will be up in about four hours.<\/p>\n
He said: that\u2019s enough time to start.<\/p>\n
I said: yes. It\u2019s enough time to start.<\/p>\n
The night was quiet in the way that suburban nights are quiet at nine o\u2019clock, the neighborhood settled and the traffic distant and the house holding us the way houses hold families when the families are in the process of becoming something.<\/p>\n
I told him about the nights.<\/p>\n
Not to punish him.<\/p>\n
To let him in.<\/p>\n
He listened in a way he had not listened before, with the specific attention of someone who has understood something tonight that they had not understood before, who has held the weight briefly and knows what it is, who is trying to understand the months of it.<\/p>\n
He said, at some point: I can hear them.<\/p>\n
I said: they make sounds when they\u2019re sleeping sometimes.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019ve never noticed before.<\/p>\n
I said: no.<\/p>\n
He said: the monitor\u2019s been on my side of the bed?<\/p>\n
I said: yes. I moved it when you started sleeping through it.<\/p>\n
He said: I didn\u2019t know you moved it.<\/p>\n
I said: there are a lot of things you didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
He said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I want to know them.<\/p>\n
I said: they\u2019ll keep coming. You\u2019ll start to see them as you pay more attention.<\/p>\n
He said: that\u2019s a strange way to put it.<\/p>\n
I said: it\u2019s the accurate way. The knowledge of your children arrives through the paying of attention. You can\u2019t shortcut it.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019ve been trying to shortcut it.<\/p>\n
I said: you\u2019ve been trying not to do it at all.<\/p>\n
He said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: Rachel.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I know this is going to take time.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I know you don\u2019t fully trust that it\u2019s real yet.<\/p>\n
I said: no. I don\u2019t fully trust that yet.<\/p>\n
He said: that\u2019s fair.<\/p>\n
I said: it is.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019m going to show you.<\/p>\n
I said: I know. That\u2019s what I\u2019m waiting for.<\/p>\n
In the nursery above us, one of the boys made a sound and then went quiet.<\/p>\n
Derek looked at the ceiling.<\/p>\n
He said: which one?<\/p>\n
I said: Owen. He does that around this time. He settles again on his own.<\/p>\n
Derek said: how do you know it\u2019s Owen?<\/p>\n
I said: their sounds are slightly different. You\u2019ll start to hear the difference.<\/p>\n
He said: you can hear the difference already.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: how long did that take?<\/p>\n
I said: a few weeks. Once you\u2019re up with them enough, it just becomes part of how you know them.<\/p>\n
He said: I want to know them like that.<\/p>\n
I said: you will. It just takes being there.<\/p>\n
He said: I\u2019m going to be there.<\/p>\n
I said: I know.<\/p>\n
He said: starting tomorrow night.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: and every other night after.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: and the appointments.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: and the evenings.<\/p>\n
I said: yes.<\/p>\n
He said: I have a lot of catching up to do.<\/p>\n
I said: yes. But they\u2019re five months old. There\u2019s a lot of time left.<\/p>\n
He said: not wasted time.<\/p>\n
I said: no. Not wasted. Just time you\u2019re going to have to show up for from now on.<\/p>\n
He said: that sounds manageable.<\/p>\n
I said: it is. One day and one night at a time.<\/p>\n
The house was quiet.<\/p>\n
The boys slept.<\/p>\n
And for the first time in a long time, I was not alone in the managing of the quiet.<\/p>\n
That was enough for tonight.<\/p>\n
That was where we started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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