Tuesday, February 4, 2014

The Leveled Playing Field

Dear Ellie,

Being a man, I've always been envious of the relationship that a mother has with her baby.  Yes, we don't have to deal with all of that childbirth stuff, but neither are we equipped to experience many of the joys, either.  We will never feel our children kick inside of us.  Or be able to keep them as close in their earliest years, because the need to nurse will keep them near their mothers.  But now, in this strange place where the rules have been suspended, the playing field between mother and father has been flattened.  We are both equally helpless.  

And now that your mother is sick and away, it is me, the father, that stands vigil over you.  That hoards those earliest moments of life.  I feel guilty for it.  After all that your mother has been through, I feel she deserves these moments more than me.  That she has earned them.  

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