Happy Father’s Day to the guy who still needs to lie down
June 18th, 2006
Today, doing laundry, I was thinking about how it all started. For him. Maybe I am just guessing. Maybe I am being presumptuous, thinking I could know.
I can supply the date. October 1st, 2000.
Of course I can supply the place. I can always supply the place. A sunny afternoon in an old pre-war building in upper (way upper) Manhattan, five blocks north of the George Washington Bridge, two blocks south of Fort Tryon Park. Bright fourth-floor apartment shaped like a T, with French doors and a skinny, skinny kitchen and a painted-over mezuzzah in every doorway and a long, shadowy, unsettling foyer—the spine of the T—inhabited by the ghosts of two abandoned, miserable pitbulls who had reportedly expired there before we came along.
There is no separating any event from its landscape. Not that I know of. I’m all right with that, and so is he.
If the girls ask me someday, I will say it started for him—really started—in the bathroom. White subway-tiled walls, six-foot-long nicely reglazed tub, honeycomb black-and-white floor tile.
Beside the tub, the toilet. I had managed to aim fairly well and get most of the golden goods into a plastic party cup instead of the toilet. The other method—the “hold the absorbent tip under the stream of urine for five seconds” method—was clearly not to be attempted by a first-timer with shaky hands (and a husband waiting outside the bathroom door. Old glass knob on door, beautiful thing).
I placed the cup of urine on the sink. Pedestal sink, globby with liquid soap.
In went the stick. Up came my wrist (Indiglo silver-toned ladies’ Timex, black leather strap).
Five? Ten seconds? I followed the instructions. Out came the stick.
“Do you want to come in and see this?” I said. (Something like this, he says I said.) “Do you want to come in and see this?”
In came the husband. We agree on this much. But when I ask what he was doing, what he was thinking, what he was looking at while he was out in the hallway, he just says, “I was calm.” But what were you leaning against? Were you looking up or down? Were you looking at the closed bathroom door? “I remember being calm.”
Subsequent moments, up for grabs. Too many neurons firing. But we salvaged this:
Out came another pregnancy test. In went another stick, and then, out came another stick, with the same happy hieroglyphic.
A line? Two lines? A circle? Again, lost.
But the late-afternoon sun in the bathroom is mine to keep (maybe his as well, but you’ll have to ask him). Afternoon sunlight making its mellow way through the frosted glass window over the toilet. Privacy glass. The window looked out over the schoolyard—when I dared open it, which was not often, even in the sticky New York City summers. (”They can’t see you there, you know,” he would say, over and over. “You don’t know that,” I would reply, over and over.)
Two people, two positives, and some sun. In a white bathroom.
“I think we should lie down,” he said.
New landscape: the bed my mother refused to nap on, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to lie down on the marriage bed.” Us, facing each other, still and smiling and waiting to see how this would play itself out. Would we cry? No, we would not. Would we yell and jump up and down? No. I only remember something about hands, our hands (touching? over our heads? can’t figure it out, lost, another thing).
His parents would arrive in our haunted foyer in a few hours. In six days, we would all head upstate to a farm for a very belated (one year and fifteen days after we eloped) wedding celebration.
We are not at all surprised that Sophie likes big white cakes and polka music.
I think that’s how it started. For him—the wonderful one who today received three handmade cards, a ratchet screwdriver, a $65 chipped estate-sale table for his art studio, and a few hours away from his life as one of the finest, kindest, dearest papas ever to walk the planet.
Or to lie down on the planet. He still likes to lie down. It’s better than yelling and jumping up and down.
But you’d have to ask him.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Playdates. (Relationships)
32 Comments
1. carole | June 18th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
oh my god, I love this. I love the way you wrote this.
2. Simon | June 18th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
I don’t think that was terribly presumptuous at all.
Happy happy, day day.
3. kirsty | June 19th, 2006 at 12:03 am
So beautiful. You and your Mama, you both make my cry
4. moxiemomma | June 19th, 2006 at 12:30 am
this is absolutely marvelous. it made me smile.
5. samantha | June 19th, 2006 at 12:34 am
I love stories about topics such as this. And you wrote it wonderfully. It’s important to remember stuff like that and it’s good for Sophie too. Great story. Congrats and Happy Father’s Day!!
6. mom on a wire | June 19th, 2006 at 12:43 am
I’m going to make it official now: YOU ARE THE MOST AMAZING WRITER OF ALL TIME. Holy cow, woman. The talent you have.
7. J | June 19th, 2006 at 5:16 am
Totally cute, and a great writer? So unfair!
Loved this.
8. geogirl | June 19th, 2006 at 6:40 am
Ah Jenn…this is what I like best.
It’s the moments. The little moments in life. And you make them shine.
9. Amy (binkytown) | June 19th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Thats the best fathers day tribute Ive ever seen- how wonderful!
10. Kelli | June 19th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Your post left me a little teary eyed this morning. And how lovely for Sophie to be able to read this when she’s older.
Happy belated Fathers Day.
11. chris | June 19th, 2006 at 9:45 am
exquisitely worded- you painted a wonderful words and feeling scene. i’m glad to know that i’m not the only one who starts to recall something with a description of what the light was like. it’s important! again, beautifully done.
12. Spot the Wonder Dog | June 19th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Oh man… I was waiting for you to spill the cup of urine…
13. Vikki | June 19th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Beautiful images…
14. Rachel | June 19th, 2006 at 10:24 am
You made me cry. Again.
Like a baby, actually.
What a wonderful story, and how wonderfully told. Wow.
15. Lisa S. | June 19th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Work on your book girl…just work on it is all I have to say. Your words are like eating the best ice cream ever…..Delicious! Oh David…Happy Father’s Day! I know you are outnumbered but I have a feeling you wouldn’t want it any other way!!!! (well maybe)
16. Tater and Tot | June 19th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Awesome. Just awesome.
17. Nichole | June 19th, 2006 at 11:16 am
That was so lovely. Particularly: “But the late-afternoon sun in the bathroom is mine to keep.”
18. Another Jen | June 19th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
“Two people, two positives, and some sun. In a white bathroom.”
Poetry, pure and simple.
19. Lianne | June 19th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Beautiful….
Reminds me of the day, after undergoing radiation for lymphatic cancer, that I found myself unbelievingly looking at a pregnancy test. The miracle had happened. God had answered my prayers.
I think I walked into walls for about three days. I probably should have just laid down.
20. Tiff | June 19th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
You are a TRUE talent Jenn. Such a lovely post.
21. Nancy | June 19th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Gosh, so beautiful. You really captured the moment. Happy Father’s Day to your husband, and happy remembering to you.
22. Coley | June 19th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Beautiful and funny. “the golden goods” superb just superb!!
23. veronica | June 19th, 2006 at 4:33 pm
“the same happy hieroglyphic”
Excellent image.
24. the Mater | June 19th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
You make me so proud to be your mother and so lucky to have a son-in-law like David. This story will go into the family archives. Sophie will treasure it one day as she treasures you both as her parents.
You paint such beautiful and memorable pictures with your words.
David paints and so do you.
25. mamatulip | June 19th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
This was amazing.
26. KeriS | June 19th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Beautiful, Jenn. So beautiful. I do hope we can see each other one day… your David and my Ken are cut from the same block… We are truly two of the luckiest mommies in the entire world. It makes my heart so warm to know that you have such happiness in your family. It is so very rare.
27. H.A. Page | June 19th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
I can remember the moment I conceived each child. Not just the results of the test. The time we DID IT. My thoughts before, like “go for the third one now or never” and bingo. Then thinking it was like going off the highdive….WHAT HAVE I DONE???? NO TURNING BACK. PLEASE, OH PLEASE, LET THIS ONE BE EASY. DON’T GIVE ME MORE THAN I CAN HANDLE. DON’T GIVE ME ANOTHER ONE THAT SCREAMS.
And the father who learned how to rock a baby through colic the third time. Who learned how to sing a child to sleep on the second one.
With this post I guess you breed ‘em and weep….for joy.
Cheers.
28. kt flynnie | June 20th, 2006 at 11:37 am
Wow you tell the most amazing stories, I am constantly in awe.
*Happy Father’s Day David! *
29. Mom101 | June 30th, 2006 at 7:55 am
Oh this is a perfect post. How did I ever miss this one? Maybe we were lying down.
30. Motherhood Uncensored | June 30th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
What a lovely post - and tribute to the dad. Congrats.
31. bubandpie | July 1st, 2006 at 4:24 pm
This is my first visit - brought here for the Perfect Post - and it was. Perfect. So lovely.
32. roo | July 3rd, 2006 at 9:20 pm
I’m sad to come so late to such a beautiful post. Thank you.
(BTW, I just moved into your old neighborhood in upstate Manhattan. As I read, I wanted to jump up and down and say, “I know that schoolyard! I know that park!” And maybe someday I’ll stand in my own honeycomb-tiled bathroom with my husband, reading the heiroglyphics of our future…)
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