Genevieve’s delivery was similar to Gabi’s in many ways. My mom and Derek were there. We were at Rose Hospital in Denver with the same ob-gyn and the same labor and delivery nurse. But in many ways it was different: easier, more natural. Derek and I laughed with the doctor between pushes, and when girl number two arrived, she looked familiar because she looked like her sister. Derek and I made a certain combination, and Genevieve had the look. I didn’t know her yet, but I would. And I knew the kind of consuming love that was ahead. My heart and arms were familiar with mothering.
Derek spent every free minute of Gabi’s first years of life remodeling our fixer house. Painting, putting in sinks, repairing floorboards. I cared for the baby. We split our duties in a traditional domestic way. He went to work. I did laundry. He made house repairs. I made dinner. For the most part we were happy with that arrangement.
When Genevieve arrived, the old way of doing things didn’t work as well. Derek took Gabi when I couldn’t. No longer the center of my universe, child number one studied me holding her new baby sister—she was now in Daddy’s arms watching Mommy. The dynamic in the house had shifted. And we all had to figure out how it was going to work.
“Where’s Daddy?” nearly three-year-old Gabi asked as she walked in the kitchen. Her baby sister had been home for a few weeks, and Gabi had been spending more time than ever with Dad. It was a Saturday, so although her routines looked similar to the rest of the week, there was an added difference—Daddy was around.
“I don’t know.” The harsh tone of my voice surprised even me. I was too tired to care. She was right. Where was he? “I think he’s in the garage,” I answered.
“Is he making something?” she asked, indicating she knew her daddy’s handyman habits all too well.
“A coffee table, I think.”
I watched Gabi walk to the kitchen door and stand on her tiptoes to reach the brass doorknob for the security door that led outside. She pushed it open and disappeared into the backyard and beyond in search of Daddy.
Like with marriage, I didn’t have a picture of what my husband’s parenting would look like. As we adjusted our roles to life with kids, I had a blank slate to draw from. I knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want him to be absent. And Derek was present, faithfully going to work every day to a job that felt on the stifling side so he could provide for us, his girls. There was no question he was present and accounted for, what I wanted in my daughters’ father. So why was I so frequently annoyed?
I checked on the baby still asleep in the bassinet and followed Gabi through the kitchen door. Stepping onto the back porch, I could hear the radio blaring from the garage, the announcer’s voice giving his monotone report on the Colorado Rockies baseball game. The high-pitched squeal of the table saw interrupted the announcer’s commentary, confirming Derek was indeed making something. I scanned the backyard, looking for Gabi. The deck. The king-sized sandbox Derek made as Gabi’s first-year birthday gift. The swing in the back corner he’d hung from the high tree branch for her. The slide he picked up on the side of the road and brought home like a warrior with bounty for his princess.
I followed the noise into the garage. Derek had pulled the cars out in order to make room for his table saw. And there next to him was his companion in construction, riding her red tricycle around the random obstacle course of scrap lumber on the concrete floor.
They simultaneously looked up at me as I stepped in the doorway, and they smiled. A happy pair doing their thing.
“Can she reach that blade?” I asked as I assessed the height of the table saw and the reach of Gabi’s arm.
“No,” he answered without looking at it.
“Are there any nails in those pieces of wood?” My eyes fell on the scrap pieces spread around the floor. I glanced around the garage for other potential hazards. I was worried he wasn’t going to do what he needed to in order to protect her. That she wouldn’t be safe. That he wouldn’t do things the way I would do them.
And there was the crux of my angst. I wanted him to do things like me when he wasn’t meant to. Gabi had two capable parents, but I wasn’t giving Derek the freedom to parent his way. To be her father. His was a side-by-side, relaxed approach. A big-picture approach. I often got stressed about lunch dishes getting washed or leaving the house on time. The immediate tasks of the moment that needed to get done. And if I was stressed about them, I thought everyone should be. I became angry, resentful, when he didn’t find the same urgency in getting the diaper changed.
“Mommy, look at Daddy’s toffee table!” Gabi exclaimed.
Derek pushed his safety goggles from his eyes up to his forehead. I silently admitted that if he was following his eighth-grade shop class rules for eye protection, he would certainly have the forethought to protect his daughter from the tools.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked as he tilted a piece of wood up for me to see. He motioned to the corner of the garage, and I saw what looked like the metal base of a coffee table.
“I found it in the dumpster,” he said of the orphaned base. “I’ll just spray paint it and we’ll have a new table.”
I had unknowingly married an artist. A dumpster-diving, tool-wielding artist whose studio was his workshop. I knew deep in the caverns of my brain that whispers of the past were present, pushing on my subconscious to resent his weekend warrior activities in the garage. Where is he? they would whisper. He’s leaving you, his girls, while he’s off being creative, alone. But I also knew those pushes, those messages, weren’t true. He’d rather have us join him, listening to the Rockies game and playing on the tricycle, than not. But he also needed that outlet to unwind from the stresses of providing for his family.
I turned to go back in the house to be within earshot of the baby. The truth was that his laid-back approach, his relaxed nature, was part of what I fell in love with years earlier. I wasn’t afraid he would explode at the littlest thing, and he offered wise, big-picture perspective. We were both growing into our constantly shifting roles. As I was learning to let go of some of my expectations about mothering, I was learning I needed to give him freedom to be the father he uniquely was. Formed out of the man he uniquely was. I needed to appreciate he was present. With his safety goggles on.