Family: It's What's For Dinner (Revisited)

If someone were to ask me to describe what being a mother is like, I would probably refer to that old Peace Corps slogan from the 1980s, that it's the 'Toughest job you'll ever love'. Cheesy to the extreme and perhaps a tad too concise, but it kind of says it all.

Still, after almost 6 years of doing this 'job', and for the most part doing it on my own, I am still often surprised by the sheer animal ferocity with which I love and protect my kid -- this guileless, beautiful creature who shares my talent for goofy facial gestures and my unfortunate tendency toward gas and sweaty feet.

And as we all know, when you love someone with that kind of feral intensity, you open yourself up for a garden variety of heartbreak. With Lily, my most chest-tightening moments come when she starts talking about her father, referring to him as if he's a great, influential part of her life. And I know that, more than anything, she just wants this to be true, even though it's not. She is hanging on to the thready bits of her relationship with him and trying to cling to whatever memories she is losing as she grows and thrives in her new life here.

I know this. Yet it still hurts me when, after Lily, me, and Jeremy (whom I refer to jokingly as 'Stepdaddy', or 'Newdaddy') climb into the car after spending an awesome day together, the kid will pipe up, apropos of nothing, "You know, I still live at Daddy's house, too".

And I feel smacked in the face. I know she's not deliberately trying to hurt Jeremy or me, but these words still sting. Because, even after her father and I split, while he couch-surfed and traveled and rented a room in someone's house, and especially now that we reside halfway across the country, she has always, always lived with me. And I feel the need to protect this. To make it known. He was the parent who left, and I was the one who stayed, and it's so not fair that he gets credit he hasn't earned. He shouldn't get elevated to rock-star status when he can't even play an instrument. No freaking way. I call foul.

So I say, matter-of-factly, "No, baby. You've never lived at Daddy's house. You visit there, and Daddy visits you. And he's your dad and he loves you. But you live with me. With Jeremy and me."

She pulls off one of her crocs and picks at a mosquito bite on her baby toe. "I do live with Daddy too." she says, a little more quietly this time. And my heart breaks for her, and I wish her father was here, so that I could run him over with my car.

I don't want my kid to hate her dad. I don't want him to just evaporate because I decided to move across the country to start over. Really, I don't.

OK, that's not true. Sure I want that. I mean, the dark, nasty, slimy part of me would looooove it if Lily just woke up one day and realized, You know, my father is really kind of a juvenile, narcissistic tool and I think I'll just drop him like a hot potato. Then I'll watch as she melts into Jeremy's waiting, open arms and the three of us will fuse together and become a superawesome, Modern American Blended Family for the 21st century.

But I don't live in a goddamned fairy tale, and I know it's not as easy as that. Lily still needs her dad to be in her life. And I want her to have him. Even if what he has to give kind of sucks. Because I don't want her to be a girl who grows with dad issues and ends up spending all of her hard-earned retirement on therapy.

And as much as I want to, I can't blurt out all of the ugly, terrible truths about why her father is so far away. I don't know if I'll ever be able to tell her these things, even when she's older and wiser and asking real questions about her lineage. I don't know if she'd benefit in any way from knowing these things about a man she now sees as fully capable and omniscient and, well, perfect.
Maybe he is that to her. And if he is, shouldn't I want to let her keep that?

But we are engaged in a strange dance, my daughter, my boyfriend, and me. It's a daily three-way tango of pushing-and-pulling as my little girl falls into a deeper sense of trust with this man that I love. I watch him sink patiently into the couch at night as she slings her freshly-bathed legs into his lap and holds his face in her hands and kisses his cheeks. I listen to her wild girl-laugh as he plays with her on the floor and tickles her and lets her ride on his back. I smile and my heart does flipflops and I get all ohmygod as I see her let him in a little more every day.

And then, just like that, she'll push him away, as if suddenly realizing that loving Jeremy must mean loving her father less. She'll get angry when he tells her to please not yell at the dinner table and say, "I don't even like you," and look at her plate and I can see her shutting down, turning right off like a porch light at bedtime. And I struggle with this, because Jeremy deserves better.

Jeremy is here for teeth-brushing and stories and homework and peed-on sheets in the middle of the night. He painted his guest room pink, and installed a night light in the shape of a princess crown, and he buys juice boxes and gummy fruit for Lily's lunch and endures hours of brain-bleedingly horrible Disney Channel shows. This is our life, this is what it means to be there for the people you love every day, and he is here every day.

So, I try to do what I can to keep the balance. It's not easy. Part of me wants to shriek and claw out my hair when Lily insists on sleeping with her favorite Yankee cap, because it reminds her of being at a ball game with her dad. But she needs these pulpy bits of comfort, and I have to try and keep things in perspective. What's the harm in sleeping with a goddamn baseball hat, besides waking up with hat head? In the grand scheme of things, really, that's not so bad, is it?