3rd December 2010
Dear Emma,
As I write this I’ve just left you with Poppy. I took you tea to replace the un-drunk tea with the milky film over it. You smiled as I set it down: grateful for any small contribution I make.
You looked so in control: bright eyes, flushed skin, a book in one hand and Poppy nestled in the crook of your other arm, her tiny hand grazing your chest, her eyes rested closed. When you turned the page you didn’t even nudge her.
I scooted next to you and you smelled of vanilla.
“Hey,” you whispered, tipping your head toward me so it rested on my shoulder.
I felt something in my chest spark to life.
“I can’t believe she’s ours,” you said seconds later. “That we get to be her parents.”
I stared down at Poppy. At this tiny person who came screaming into our lives, trying to feel the truth of your words, knowing I should agree. I got up and left.
I’ve left a lot in the last few months.
I always thought I’d be a pretty good dad. I had clips in my head: me chucking some happy, giggling child in the air, running across sand chasing them. But having Poppy, this tiny, fragile baby—more often crying than smiling—has thrown me. This is the only place I can admit how hard I’m finding it to you. It feels like complaining about a broken furnace to someone who’s homeless.
You are the one who should be complaining to me. And you hardly ever do. And when you do it’s because the room is literally on fire (I genuinely don’t know how that tea towel got there) or Poppy has cried on you for five hours straight or I’ve managed to heat the milk too hot so she screams at us as we wait those agonizing minutes for it to cool.
You’ve had to recover from an emergency caesarean, deal with the disappointment of your carefully thought-through birth plan being upended, the early days when your body refused to gear up, crying on the useless health visitor who kept holding up that weird knitted breast and massaging it to show you how to get milk. And all this after nine months of nausea, back pain, swollen limbs, and me on a three-second delay, or barely there at all.
I bring tea, biscuits, toast, tea. Linger in doorways, not knowing how to fix mastitis or stop your trips to the bathroom making you cry out in pain. I can’t even seem to help stop Poppy wailing. So I throw myself into more work, get busy, prove I’m helping in that at least.
Sleep deprivation has worn us both down—I was so naïve to think I had any clue what parenting would be like. My Google searches have gone from “best local restaurants” to “can a baby remember things from birth,” “if a baby cries for more than an hour is it damaging?,” “how many couples break up after their first baby.” I did look that up. There are so many times in the last few months where I wouldn’t have blamed you, I feel like I’ve barely brought anything to the party.
I know I need to do better.
When I think of what Mum would say to me it makes me ashamed. I still think of that last visit to the house, her skeletal hand gripping mine. She asked me if it was a boy or a girl. We were going to keep it as a surprise but I told her it was a girl. We both knew she wouldn’t live to see for herself.
How does life change like that? One minute she’d been picking us up from the airport waving that garish homemade sign, a little more tired over Christmas perhaps than normal. And then she was sitting me and Hattie down and telling us what the doctors had told her.
Sometimes I see her in Poppy’s eyes, the same shade of dark brown, or imagine her in the curl of her smile. It takes my breath away that I can lose someone I love so much, so quickly.
Sometimes I’m floored by a memory—her swearing in Italian in the car when we were kids, her farting so loudly in a tent she woke up Dad and accused him of doing it in his sleep. I pick up my mobile to speak to her, but she isn’t there to ring. She isn’t there to tell me that I can do this, how to do this. I stay in my dressing gown and pretend not to notice you need something from me. I know I need to do better; I know I do.
I’ve just returned to the sitting room and you’ve fallen asleep. The book has slipped from your hands and Poppy is still safe in your arms. I took her from you and rested her down in her Moses basket. Then I draped a blanket over you.
I’m here now. Poppy’s stirring. If she wakes I want to handle it, want to help take some of the strain from you. I don’t want to freeze; I don’t want to panic.
I don’t want to be this person.
I’m sorry.
Dan x