Recent thoughts on fatherhood
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about the girls.
They’re now almost two. Rachel is a tank, bulldozing her way through life. She climbs anything that’s taller than she is — the more challenging, the better. We have to watch her closely now, for fear that she’ll kill herself. She’s so small, so petite compared to her sister, but also incredibly strong and determined. Whenever we come back from Target with supplies, she grabs the biggest bag she can find and drags it down the hall to the apartment. She loves to help.
Anya is more complicated. Although her sister is smart, Anya is another league of awareness and language ability. She asks what everything is, even things she already knows, and plays with the words we give back until she’s mastered them. We have this joke when I’m changing her, when I sing the theme to “Elmo’s World,” but substitute “Elmo” with “Daddy.” She thinks this is terribly wrong and funny, exploding with laugher while correcting me: “No, Elmo’s World!” There were a few weeks there when she didn’t want anything to do with me, but that song has been a breakthrough. Now she brings me books and insists that I read them over and over. And she calls for me when she’s in the bath.
Her sister used to call for me. Now she’s more interested in climbing.
I never thought during those hard early months, that I would soon find myself — now more or less free of that intense responsibility — striving to gain my daughters’ attention, and yet, here I am, thinking up games I can play with them, new books to read. I think I understand my father more clearly, now — and how much like him I am. I want to spend time with my children, and I’m saddened when they brush me off for other things. My dad struggled to get me to do things with him, but he always tried to engage me in the things he liked, never what I was interested in. So compulsory games of “catch” ended in frustration, him throwing the ball at me, as did all those Sunday mornings he woke me up to help him work on his car, and furiously sent me back inside after I was clearly bored.
But I’m trying to reach out to the girls through their interests. I understand that they are their own people, and to have a good relationship with them means finding common ground, something we both like, or even, something only they like. So I sit with them and watch Dora the Explorer, and read the same books about animals over and over again, because it clearly makes them happy and it helps forge my relationship with them. Because I’m their father, not their mother — I didn’t carry them, I don’t that connection. Our relationship is not automatic, particularly considering the complexity and strength of the twin bond, or the special mother-daughter bond.
Love for fathers must be earned. That’s the lesson my dad never quite got, and the reason why I never quite loved him. I can’t let myself make the same mistake with my girls.
Raising Twins | jeff | 21 June 2007 |
