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.

Today, my husband and I fought in front of our children for the first time ever.

EVER.

Like, in 11 and a half years ever.

I don’t mean to say that we don’t ever fight because god knows we do. If you’ve ever dared to dip your toes in the murky waters that are my archives, you’ll know what I mean. And Christ, I met him when I was twenty. I’ve gone through no less than 10 variations of myself between then and now, and so has he. Our shit, it is hard sometimes. But coming from two spilt families, me with my history of domestic assault and him with his abandonment baggage, we’ve worked really hard to keep our crap between us.  Sure, we fight, but we don’t do it often and when we do, it’s over as soon as it starts.

Usually, I will start being an insane asshole and he’ll tell me to go take a five minute walk and sort it out. Or he’ll open a big, fat can of jerkface and I’ll tell him to check it before I am forced to wreck it and that ends it. We’re actually really good at mitigating each others mood-swings, and because of that, our kids have never once born witness to anything more than a long scowl or a stern, “Other room, NOW.”

It would seem that my Mercury was firmly lodged in his Uranus today or something, because while I was trying to get 2of3 to clean the damn bathroom, he decided that at that very second, 2of3 needed to take the vacuum to his brother. And I was so sick and tired of trying to get that kid upstairs to the bathroom, I told him no. And The Donor told him yes. So I told The Donor no, and he told me to fuck off and I told him to shove it up his ass and the threw the vacuum and I told him to get the fuck out.

Because we’re five, that’s why.

Meanwhile, my nine year old was just standing there watching this whole parade of lunacy unfold before him and as soon as dad walked out of the room, he started to cry.

Because we’re fantastic parents, that’s why.

And he told me he was scared, and I held him and told him that he fights worse than that with his brother every day and reminded him that I am a pain in the ass and his dad is an overbearing know-it-all and we’ve lived together for 14 long, long years and told him that of course we fight sometimes.

And now I don’t know if I’m sad that my kid had to see us acting like three year olds or if I’m secretly a little glad that he witnesses an argument that resolved itself within ten minutes with a big hug and two unprompted and very sincere apologies that I made sure happened right in front of that kid and then ice cream, because ice cream cures all evils. Am I wrong to think that I should be teaching him that it’s okay to have conflicts and that the world doesn’t end when you have them? Because I lived thirty years thinking one raised voice meant the End Of Civilization as we know it, and I never learned how to fight and get over it until I had to learn the hard way.

There’s really no point to this at all. I just worry sometimes that they think their parent’s marriage is the perfect, happy go lucky thing and because of that, when their time comes, they will have no clue how to deal with the reality of marriage and the reality of marriage is that bitches, on occasion, be crazy, and you love them through it anyway.

Right?

We hardly ever get to see The Donor around these parts.  We see him get ready for work in the morning, and if we’re really really lucky, we might see him come home at night. But only if it’s all-nighter-zombie-movie-night.  We get him every Sunday, and we get him for dinner on Mondays, and that’s it.  As in, it.

And that’s why we stole him away this week. We missed him. It’s weird missing someone who technically lives in your house, but we do, all of the time. And he needed it, to be honest. Sure, I work all day, too, but I don’t do it in a tux and on my feet. I deal with three children under 5 feet, he deals with 40 children over 5 feet. His days, they suck. So for Father’s Day, we gave him all the day, none of the suck. And instead of just seeing him blowdry his hair and chug his coffee, instead of seeing him walk in the door and collapse onto the couch 14 hours later, this weekend we got to see him relax.

We got to see him enjoy the small things.

And revel in the big things.

And we got to let him be someone’s dad, too.

He got new shoes, and he got to use them. Twice.

He got to share his favorite thing in the world with his sons.

And they got to share their favorite thing with him.

But best of all, I got to see my husband, he got to see his wife, and our kids got to see their mom and dad. At the same time.

And no one was getting stitches.

I’ve talked before about the craving we as parents have to mold our children into little mini-me’s, to see some glimmer of ourselves behind those big, beautiful eyes.  I’ve talked about how hard we both have strived to avoid doing just that thing, for the sake of our kids’ sanity.  We were both pushed and pushed perhaps a bit too hard as children.  We both spent most of our lives trying to live up to some unattainable ideal of perfection that our parents had laid out for us.  We both had an absent parent who we alternately tried to garner the love of and spite with our over-achievement.

We both have parent issues.  We try to not share them with our kids.

For me, not pushing them to be me is simply a matter of not letting them slit their wrists and not pushing them to get straight A’s all the time and reading them something other than Douglas Adams.  For The Donor, it’s a bit more complicated.  He was that kid.  I have scrapbooks on scrapbooks full to the brim with newspaper clippings and accolades.  I have cases of ribbons and pins and trophies in my basement.  I have a wall full of plaques and a closet full of uniforms waiting for a child who needs them.  For a child who will follow his father’s footsteps.  And I have a very tired father here, too, one who never got his childhood because he was too busy being pushed to be the fastest, the hardest, the leanest, the best.

And so I’ve read them other stories (thank you, Dan Brown) and he’s let them dip their foot in a pool with an instructor rather than with him, and he’s put them in soccer lessons with any other coach, and he’s sat back and waited.  I’ve seen him dream.  I’ve seen the hope well up inside of him like a fire and I’ve seen that flame extinguish time and time again, mostly because he’s an athlete and I’m a nerd and nerds don’t push their kids to hit balls for a living and athletes don’t buy their kids Mensa Mind Challenge books for fun.  Our kids will be neither of us, it seems.  At least not by our doing.

He’s actually been trying his hand at their sports of choice a little lately, and let me tell you that a 37 year old man on a Ripstick is damn near the funniest thing you’ve ever seen in your entire life.  Especially when he does a double-backwards-aerial-somersault and lands flat on his ass.  That man was never a cat, in any life.

Our boys are both athletic in their own rights.  1of3 was born with Perfect. Fucking. Balance. The kid walked at 8 months and rode a 2 wheel bike, without training wheels, at 2.  Not kidding. 2of3 has an arm, oh my god does he ever.  He’s buoyant enough to swim well, but not focused enough.  1of3 is like a brick in the water, just like his momma.  They both love to skateboard and ride BMX bikes and I think one of them may be eyeballing motocross, which should make their godfather about explode with pride, but none of that does their father a whole lot of good.

See, I think dads really crave that thing they can share with their kids, maybe more so than moms do.  My bond with them is easy; I can close my eyes and still feel them stir inside of me, I can feel the measure of their brand new bodies wrapped around mine, suckling themselves to sleep, if I just concentrate enough. But it’s not so easy for their dad.  He didn’t carry them and he didn’t nurse them and now that they are growing away from us, now that we’re struggling to hold on to the last little bits of them before we are gone and they are complete, I see how he yearns for something of them them, something uniquely theirs, something he can share with them and give to them and be with them.

And then this happened:

They’ve always played golf with him.  They’ve always had clubs and they’ve always gone to the range with him and they’ve always watched the Master’s in his lap, but they’ve never truly learned to play his game before.  And it just turns out that my little 2of3 has found his authentic swing.  He is a golfer.

The Donor was there with them for the first half of their lessons, and I met him at the course for the second half. He kept saying to me, “Honey, just look at him.  Watch this…” and I saw the flame begin to spark in his eyes.  I watched my 2of3 focus, I watched him swing away and I knew that he’d found something that spoke to him.  This is kind of a rare thing in his world.  Before his dad left us to head off to work, he leaned into me and whispered in my ear with stifled excitement, “He’s our golfer.”After The Donor left, I was busy chasing 3of3 on the other side of the fence, trying to watch my sons and failing miserably.  I mean, really, can you blame me?

And then I heard it.  I turned and looked through the fence and I saw his teacher, all of his fellow golfers, his brother even, and they were all silent and still. The sound was still resonating through us, and for a moment we were all speechless, helpless against it.

I don’t know if you follow golf, if you play or watch or understand it at all, but there’s a point in everyone’s golf game when you find it.  Yourself.  Your core. There’s a point in your game when you let yourself go and trust your own intuition and you swing that club and it hits the ball exactly perfectly and you feel it like lightening running through you.  You feel your center.  The sound the ball makes, the sound the shaft of your club makes, it’s not just impact…it’s perfect balance.  It is a sound that anyone who is near you when it happens feels, too.  The vibration, the wave, the ping, it comes from inside of you and for one perfect second, time stands still as the ball soars out from you.

If you think I’m overthinking things slightly, you’ve never hit a ball like that.  Try it.

We all stood and watched my son’s ball tear though the air.  It was like watching Monet paint, or Beethoven compose, but mostly it was like watching my husband swing his clubs.  And my son, he felt it.  He turned to me with his mouth wide open in awe of himself.  His instructor looked at me, looked at him and just said, “Wow.”  And all I could do was smile.  My son, he has it.  He has a piece of his father, a piece unique to them that none of the rest of us truly have just yet.  It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, seeing the man you love in the child you love.

The next day, the two of them sat outside together, just the two of them, and they talked as they scrubbed their clubs.  They came upstairs a whole lot later and together they barbecued for our whole family.  My son forgot his DS for the day, my husband forgot his Sunday afternoon Sports Channel shows, and they remembered each other instead.  Later that night, 2of3 came up to me and said, “Mom, me and Dad cleaned our clubs together all day today, just us!”  Even later that night, as The Donor and I sat on the porch in the dark of night, he looked at me and said, “I can’t tell you how much I’ve wanted something of ours, something to share with them.”

And what I didn’t say is that I couldn’t tell him how much more it makes me love him to see that now he has it.

Oh, and yeah. FlickR has the rest of the day’s pictures, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met him.

It was winter and I was 20.  It was his first day at some terrible restaurant that I’d been working at for a year or two. He was in the solarium going over new hire paperwork or something when I walked in the room.  There were at least 10 other people in that room, but I can’t remember even one of them.  At that moment, he was the only person on the planet.  I remember the shirt he was wearing, the necklace he had on and which side his hair parted to.  I walked into the room, my uterus lept of of me and lunged at him, I rolled that bitch up, shoved her back in and kept walking right out of the room.

I don’t know that he even saw me that day.  I don’t know that he knew my name for months after that, but that was the day I knew that someday, I was going to be a mother.  Not kidding.

It was spring and I was 21 when I first properly met him.  He was enchanting.  He was smarter than anyone I’d ever met, funny, so very very drunk, and he loved his momma.  He’d been an architecture major and I’d been a mechanical engineering major.  In a high school.  Whatever; it counts in my world.  He liked punk and I liked rock.  He drank Newcastle and I drank Tuaca.  He was a competitive swimmer with a body like a rock and I was an anorexic with a body like a bendy straw.  He had a girlfriend and I had a fiance.  So that was that.

Until the day came when I didn’t have a fiance anymore and he didn’t have a girlfriend anymore.

Turns out, my pheromones agreed with his pheromones and I was more or less pregnant at first sight.  What can I say?  The man makes eggs shoot out of me.  Our reproductive systems realized they were in love way before the rest of us did, and before we knew it we’d made this:

It also turned out that golf is the best fertility drug ever manufactured by The Scottish and twice following this:

We ended up with this and this.

We had many, many years when the only thing we managed to do right was make babies.  We had a lot of tears and a lot of hurt and a lot of misery but in the end, we knew that we did one thing absolutely flawlessly.  We didn’t mean to have any of these kids, we didn’t mean to get married, we didn’t mean to meet, we didn’t mean to live in Colorado, we didn’t mean to do almost everything we’ve done since 1995 but we did it all and we made it work and even when it was abysmal, we had this thing, this one amazingly beautiful aspect to our lives together.

We made this.  Together.  Just the two of us.  By accident.  Those three people make me believe in fate.  They make me think that maybe he chose me, and they chose us, that maybe it wasn’t an accident but that we were supposed to have them, that we needed them, that they were a gift the likes of which we didn’t deserve and never expected.

And today we ended the whole thing.

Today we woke up with the possibility of another perfectly beautiful surprise.  We woke up with the possibility of more toes to nibble and more necks to sniff and more fingers to count.  We woke up with the possibility of being parents again.  

Tonight we go to sleep knowing that we will never again hold a flashlight to my stomach so a baby will grab at the light from the inside.  We’ll go to sleep knowing that we’ll never walk our fingers across my stomach while a baby punches our fingertips.  We know that we’ll never crank up The Sex Pistols into a pair of headphones, wrap them around my stomach, and teach a baby that Sid Vicious means ni-night time.  (Totally worked, by the way, and no one had to listen to Mozart for 3/4 of a year.)  Tonight we know we’ll never watch another VHS tape with a video of a needle going into my uterus and a little baby girl’s hand reaching out to grab it in the darkness. Tonight we know that we will never again hold a 7 pound person covered in blood and goop who looks like a feral lizard and smells like, well, blood and goop and feral lizards and think that we’re seeing pure, unadulterated, heavenly beauty.  Tonight we know that there will be no more first smiles or steps or hugs or words or boo boos or spaghetti dinners.  Tonight we go to bed knowing that we laid that boy, who cast a spell on me 14 years ago, out on a table, did really awful things to his brother Darrell and his other brother Darrell and forced-quit the greatest thing we’ve ever done, the thing that spring and chemistry and destiny made sure that we would do.

So this is how fertility dies….with frozen peas.