There are some things in our family’s lives that are just their father’s job.

I don’t mean that in the patriarchal, old school, “man job” sort of way, though I believe with all my heart that killing spiders and taking out the trash are never, should never be, and will never be a woman’s job. I am the one who has explained to my kids everything and anything Wienerschnitzel-related. I told them where babies come from. I laid out, with great detail and clarity, the Household Masturbatory Rules.

I can just imagine how it will go down when he finally has to have some sort of sex talk with these kids, which I am guessing will come on their wedding night. Because that’ll be timely. “Now, son, I just want to make sure you know to always play 19 holes of golf.” And they’ll say, “Huh?” and look at him like they look at me all day, every day like he’s fucking nuts, and he’ll explain himself. “It’s crucial that you save your A Game *wink wink nudge nudge* and only whip it out after you go play golf. And then, bring it. Go all out. Be thoughtful, be sweet, be gentle, take your time and go for the Oscar. Do that every single time you go play. If you remember this one little thing, you’ll have a wife who thinks you’re so relaxed and appreciative of her understanding your need for alone time on the course, and manly, that she’ll let you…no, she’ll make you go play golf All. The. Time. And they’ll say, “Dad, does it really work? Could it be that simple?” and he’ll say, “Where the hell do you think all you kids came from?” and then they’ll throw up and wished they’d just come talk to me instead, even if I am hovering over them making sure they’re properly hydrated and have on clean underwear.

I hover. It’s a character flaw.

I wrap the sports injuries. I wrap the injuries that their father thinks are just bumps they need to shake off, and I wrap them in that adhesive sports tape that they use on the stupid UFC my husband makes me watch all the time and Ace bandages, and then they sit around the dining room table mocking me for my gross inability to wrap a child’s wrist and not leave him looking like he has three gimpy hook-fingers.

Now, their father wraps the sports injuries. He made his bed; I hope it’s comfy.

He does this sometimes. Either he doesn’t realize how good he’s got it, or he’s just keen on making his life harder. He creates these games with the kids, like Wrestle-Mania or The Claw, that there is no way in fucking hell I am going to play with them when he’s gone. When he gets home and wants to drink beer and watch gay porn UFC, he’s instead stuck letting 3 short people wage global-thermo-nuclear-war all over his butt while doing his best imitation of Steve Erwin. Before he died. Not much of an amusement, imitating him now.

I am also the one who puts them to bed, every single night, except the occasional rare night when I make him do it he takes over for me, like the night when he decided to walk our daughter through the process of dreaming. They laid in her bed when she couldn’t sleep and he talked to her about what she wanted to dream. Together, they created a fantastical story with fairies and Pokemons and chicken nuggets, or something. And then she wanted me to do it with her the next night.

I fancy myself I creative person, but I have the imagination of a doormat. I can tell you what happened to me, but dear god, don’t ask me to write fiction. I can mimic anything drawn in front of me, but there’s no way I could just paint a picture off the top of my head. The one children’s book I ever wrote, the one that would have made me a small fortune and had us sitting in the fable’s cat-bird’s seat for life had I not written it when I had a one year old who liked to chew on things, especially paper things…it was all about geometrically shaped monsters. It was creative, yes, but not imaginative.

I can’t make up bedtime stories. So when she lays all snug and cute in her bed and asks me about Chuck E Cheese, and I tell her, and then she asks me to dream it to her, well, that just means that daddy is missing the last quarter of the football game and momma gets to go take a bubble bath. Which is way more effective a way to get to tee off on that 19th green*, for the record.

*Also for the record: It’s not actually green. Metaphor, people.