Full-Time Dads;
The E-Magazine for Caregiver Fathers
Issue 3, originally appeared in print - August 1991
When Alison and I decided to make Benjamin, we both began dreaming of how wonderful it was going to be. Oh,sure, we had all sorts of people telling us how it would change our lives, and what a difficult job it was, and a huge responsibility. But we knew it would be different for us. We knew we would love our child like no parent had ever loved a child before, and ours would be wonderful.
At the moment of his birth,l was not in love with Ben. I was exhausted, and I almost passed out from release of tension. I had seen on all the t.v. shows how a new father was supposed to act, all the instant glow of a love-like-no-other. Pictures in magazines and advertisements told the same story. It was a powerful message, and it drove me crazy to think that I didn't measure up. Over the course of the next days and weeks, I felt no connection with him. I was certainly doing a good part of the daily care, and getting ready to take over full time. But I really didn't feel that intense bond that fathers are "supposed" to feel for their children, and, I thought, all the more so with a son. It will come in time, I thought. I had read some place (probably good old reassuring Dr.Spock) that I might feel this way. So I didn't worry, though it upset me a bit to be missing out on the emotions my wife was experiencing.
When I took over Bens full time care, and Alison went back to work, I began to notice a new range of emotions. I was still not head-over-heels, like Alison was, though I was growing to like him quite a bit. Let's face it, there isn't much there in the first few months. He ate and slept and pooped and cried and occasionally would "play" with me for short periods. So there really wasn't much there for me to get to know and like. What I was feeling from time to time was anger.
It upset me a whole lot more than the not loving him. To be angry with a little baby was a horrible idea. I was angry at him for crying so much, and for needing so much of my time. I wasn't able to do anything else but take care of Ben, and I resented it. I don't think I ever lost my temper with him, but it was close a few times. We'd see bits on the news about parents who abused their children and wonder how they could do it. I was beginning to understand.
Raising a child is at best a daunting task for both parents, perhaps more so for the one doing the primary care. At least it is more tiring. The first three months or so are what my sister calls "a womb with a view," meaning that if it were physically possible, the baby would rather be inside its mother. About all anyone can do is to keep the baby clean, fed,and warm. The rewards are few and far between. The baby doesn't really smile or show great amounts of love for the parents. It's a lot of work, and it takes a lot of time. It took almost all of mine.
Ben was never a big sleeper, at least not during the day. He would take a lot of half-hour naps, which didn't leave me with enough time to get to any of my projects. I had planned to write a lot, thinking Ben would be a great inspiration. I was going to get back to my darkroom, long neglected, in the evenings when Alison came home and took over, and finally wade through all those negatives I'd been amassing. I was going to spend a lot of time with my guitar, writing songs. I had all sorts of grand plans, imagining myself with the energy and time and inspiration to get to them. I never thought of myself as Superdad, but I didn't think it was any big deal to put Ben's naptime to good use.
Naturally, when he took naps,so did 1. Or at least tried to. A half hour isn't really enough to clear off a piece of the sofa to lie down. I was startled by how tiring it was to deal with a little baby. I found myself getting depressed, feeling like I wasn't doing anything. Alison tried to remind me of what a huge job I had taken on, but there was no getting through. Until I realized what was happening, the First Great Truth.
We spend all our working life under the assumption that the paycheck is the yardstick by which we measure our success. Some never subscribed to that theory, but they got written off as unrealistic dreamers. The rest of us did our best to bring home the fattest paycheck we could, feeling great self-worth when we were able, in one way or another, to fatten it. I was no different, I must admit, though I think I was more proud of the job well done than earning a great deal of money. Perhaps that is because I never made much. Anyway, here I was all of a sudden feeling like I was working my tail off at the hardest job I ever had, and yet I had no paycheck, nothing to show for it, no way to prove to the outside world that I was really doing anything. It's one thing to know when I'm not doing anything, and not expect ing a tangible reward. But at the end of the day, I was exhausted, so I must have been doing something. Perhaps it was because Alison was working and I wasn't, though we'd been in that situation before. Here I had to figure out a complete new set of standards for myself. I discovered that what was making me so angry was the fact that I was still imagining myself to be a Photographer, a Writer, and a Musician, yet I wasn't taking pictures, or writing much or making music. And what is a photographer who doesn't take pictures? At the root of it, I was trying to be the same person I had been before, but with a kid. Ben was getting in my way, and preventing me from getting anything accomplished.
There are many walls against which we find ourselves banging our heads from time to time, and it's usually only a matter of time before something or someone calls our attention to what's going on. The head banger doesn't usually see for themselves what they are doing. And once we are shown the wall, and the dent in our head, we can begin to find a way around or over or through it. Such was the case for me. I don't remember how I figured out what was going on, or how I decided on a solution. It appeared that what I had to do was strip away those parts of me that didn't fit into my day-to-day anymore. Ben had taken up every bit of time and energy that wasn't spent on maintaining my own basic life function, leaving nothing for my external pursuits. The result was that I was getting enormously frustrated everyday. Alison would come home, I would retreat to my journal, and find that I had nothing to write about except Ben. There was nothing of myself I had moved beyond the back burner, completely off the stove.
So I decided that I would no longer think of myself as a Photographer, with a capital P, though I would still take pictures from time to time. The same would have to be true of my writing and music. It was as if I was taking off hats, or name tags. If my lack of ability to photograph was making me angry, then I would let go of the self imposed need to take pictures. I would no longer get angry and frustrated when I couldn't spend a day wandering around with my camera. Easy in theory, and actually not that difficult in practise. I have read the lives of great artists, and found that most of them were lousy at other things, notably family things. What makes a great artist is an insatiable need to paint, or sculpt, or photograph, or whatever to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps, since I could so readily give up my cameras, I was not destined to be a great photographer. The realization was a bit tough to come to, but I was able to accept it, with the knowledge that some great artists didn't hit their stride until later in life.
In any case, I shunned off the various coils that were strangling me, and felt immediate relief. I suppose it took a while to untangle myself, but certainly no more than a couple weeks. It felt good to be able to hang around the house with Ben, and not feel pressured to do any more than just that. I began to wonder if my desire to be a Photographer was as strong as I once thought, but in the end even that thought didn't really matter. My approach to photography, writing and music was once again a hobby. I was happy when I found a camera in my hand,happy to play with it and experiment, but also able to put it down easily.
There still lingered the feeling that I wasn't being productive, but now it was something I could deal with on my own. Ben wasn't the culprit any more. It was no longer his fault that I wasn't DOING anything. As before, I knew intellectually that I was doing a great deal, and Alison let me know in no uncertain terms that she thought so too, but my life long conditioning to value product over process was, and still is, hard to overcome.
At the same time that I was thumbing through my psyche, I was taking tai ch'i lessons. The most impressive lesson I learned, the part of the experience I will always keep, long after the actual movements are forgotten, is the concept of process. I have always been aware of the changing nature of the universe, the old rule that the only constant is change, but learning tai ch'i made the concept real for me. My teacher said that although we learn certain stances and positions, with the placement of hands, feet and body very important and exact, the thing to remember above all else is that each position is only a place to pass through. That is why it is next to impossible to learn it from books and photographs. It is pure process, without thought of product. My teacher said to go through the whole form (as the series of movements is called), and then walk away as if nothing had happened, walk away into the next moment. There need be no lingering over what was just done, nor any though about the results. Tai ch'i is done ultimately for its own sake. I found this concept, this teaching, this wisdom could be applied to everything else in the day. If I could move through my routine as if it were a tai ch'i form, never attaching myself to any one point or stage, and walking away as if nothing had happened into the next, I could surely survive with most, if not all, of my sanity and self intact.
It's a process that I am still working on, as we near Bens third birthday and await the arrival of a sibling. Every day is a chance to remember that very simply idea. Some days I completely forget about it, and windup at six o'clock with my teeth clenched. But most days are wonderful, though sometimes I don't realize it until he is in bed and the house is quiet. Then Alison and I settle back on the sofa, and little things he did or said come floating up, and I realize how much I love him, and how much he changes me, and how wonderful the whole process is. And just as his life is pure process, so is mine. The place I am in right now, as I write this, is only a place to move through, and another chance to walk away into the next moment, as if nothing has happened.
Copyright 1991 Stephen Harris
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