From a Dad's View
While you were working
By David Pereyra
Gotta Go!
Mondays bring morning madness. The new week lies in wait, still fresh, pure opportunity--a week's worth of meetings and the chance to get everything just right this go round.
Thing is, by the time Monday morning has rolled around, Bette is ready to get on with the real work, the paying kind. Our 3-year-old daughter is not ready for her mother to go! Liesl shadows her mother, and I mean shadows, from the time she first spots her home on Friday night until Bette backs the car out the driveway again Monday morning.
Even though there's guilt during the week about not spending time with her, Bette certainly has learned to work through it. And at our house, Bette likes to break from the gate early, the weekend fading, no, gone, as she loads the car. While Bette prepares to skip out, Liesl wakes. She stretches, rolls over and opens her eyes wide, staring directly at me. She closes her eyes again and then suddenly slides down the bed and scoots off in search of her mom, fast. She knows.
"Do you go to your office today?" I hear Liesl ask as her mom scoops her up.
"Yes, momma's got to go to work," Bette replies. "Why?" asks Liesl. And wham, just like that, Bette's been tagged. I can see her flush with guilt.
"To get money to pay for our food and our bills and because she really like what she does," I say, coming up from behind. Liesl looks at me and scowls. Mornings are Liesl's and Bette's time together and little kids love nothing better than routine. Every day Bette will say, "Good morning, pappa," and Liesl, clinging to her mother like a small primate, won't even blink. She just looks right at me.
"Momma's got to leave early this morning," says Bette, looking at me with a momentary look of panic. My gig - "The Distraction." Bette's holding her cup-to-go, poised.
"Let's see what's going on outside," I say and head out the door. By this time Bette is climbing into her car. "No," says Liesl, scurrying past me to Bette's car, "we have to lock momma's door." Liesl is now more interested in doing the morning routine than in her mother actually leaving.
Operation distraction is a success.
Liesl and I are walking back to the house when I hear Bette say something. She thinks we're ignoring her. When Bette looks up again, Liesl and I are in the doorway. Liesl's holding her "people," several stuffed animals, and since she can't wave her arms because they're too full, she calls out in that tiny voice--goodbye! Goodbye momma!
Will You Snuggle Me
When Bette leaves, the whole morning atmosphere shifts. Liesl will turn to me, activity director that I am, and say, "What do we do?" What first, indeed? Breakfast? Chalk on the front drive? A half hour of Sesame Street, one of Liesl's so-called programs? A combination of these works just fine.
Later in the morning Liesl disappears somewhere in the back of the house, her bedroom or playroom. She eventually reappears in the living room carrying a small quilted blanket and spreads it out on the floor. Then she begins the slow process of carrying out, individually, each of her people (She calls her stuffed animals, her people. Her friends at school she calls her kids.)
Liesl very neatly lines her friends along the blanket she's laid out, making two circles. She then lies down in the middle of her quilted blanket and feigns sleep. "Can you help me bring in the rest of my friends? And then snuggle us?" she asks, standing up. We spread out another blanket and commence bringing out the rest of the tribe, from smallest key chain size lion to largest, a three-foot high bear. When all her friends are present Liesl settles in and asks, "What now?"
I tune my acoustic guitar and begin to play a bit and as I play on Liesl becomes more relaxed, preparing herself for a nap. It's only 10:30 a.m. but why interrupt?
"Would you keep on playing and sing me more of that lullaby?" she asks. So I do. I continue strumming and watch as her eyes bounce ever so slowly shut and she drifts quietly to sleep.
Look at the Clouds
Liesl is dressed in her purple dance costume that she loves to wear--to rags. It's late afternoon and I'm swinging her in the swing I've attached to a Mahogany tree at the side of our house. She refuses to swing her legs out and back so that she'll be able to keep herself in motion. She thinks this is funny since she'd rather me push.
She looks at herself and then at me and says with glee, "We're both dirty!" And while I swing, she sings "Momma's gonna see us dirty, momma's gonna see us dirty, momma's gonna see us dirty, my poppa and me!"
Then she stops the swing by toeing the ground and asks, "Why are we dirty?"
Next she wants me to wind the swing round and round so that when it unwinds Liesl will spin. Fast, the faster the better. She judges success by how blurred her feet become. "I can't see my feet" she squeals.
"Okay, okay, that's enough," she says, after a couple of go-rounds. It's on to the pool, more to wash her off than for any swim lesson. Evening is coming on now, the sky yellowing as the sun slides off the horizon.
"It's a doggie cloud," shouts Liesl, floating on her back, hovering over the steps and pointing up to the sky. She begins bouncing and practicing make-believe ballet steps. "I see a T," she squeals, smiling.
The smell of freshly mown grass fills the early evening air. This is one of the single smells I know Bette truly loves.
"Tell me it's okay," says Liesl as she floats and splashes in the shallow end of the pool, dancing slowly on the pool steps. "Tell me." She's set her juice cup afloat and she looks from it to me. "You can say it," she smiles.
"It's okay," I answer, soothingly. One of the beautiful things about Liesl is her gentleness and odd maturity. Whenever I do something, say, misplace my house keys or a book or break a dish, Liesl will come up and say gently, it's okay. Forgiveness from a three year old is very heartening.
And So, What Did You Do?
I see Bette standing in the back doorway, home from work, watching us, the same way Liesl stood earlier in the day. Liesl dances still on the steps while her mother silently approaches. I imagine that Bette's heart must sing, coming home from a hard day at the office to see her rosy-cheeked girl at play. She is a veritable Goldilocks from the sun and chlorine. I think of Bette walking through the house, first greeted at the front door by colorful chalk scribbles, faces, big and small letters, Aa,Bb,Cc, odd words that Liesl shouted out this morning for me to spell.
Then she'll enter the house and pass through the living room where Liesl's friends are resting quietly on her baby blankets, scattered about but neatly. Finally she'll reach the back porch, true touchdown point for Hurricane Liesl's most concentrated activities. The pink Barbie tea set will be collected in its basket, her spangle jump rope lying nearby. Small pieces of colored paper carpet the floor, participants in scissor practice. "I'm making shoes,"said Liesl earlier in the day as she snipped paper into tiny shreds. And the paints. … Well, one small piece of wall will be smeared a red and green color that can only be achieved by mixing together all the colors of the rainbow, twice. Liesl's wall, the only one she's allowed to write on. "We're rainbow kids," she told me earlier in the day after finger painting her body and face.
"Momma's home," Bette sing songs, smiling and holding out her arms to Liesl, a true Ozzie and Harriet kind of thing. Liesl meanwhile dives into the water, momentarily startled. "Oh, oh, oh," she says, surfacing and paddling back towards her mother.
"So," Bette asks, reaching for her, "what have you been doing all day?"
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David Pereyra is a stay-at-home dad and the partner of a BlueSuitMom.