Shifting from Mom to Dad

I sat there bleary-eyed, soaking in the moonlight, basking in the love of a new life wrapped in white cotton, as she drifted in and out of slumber on her first night earth side. She came into the world at exactly midnight, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Even now, 13 years later, I close my eyes and can feel the warmth of her breath. I can smell the sweet scent of her freshly birthed skin and the softness of her peach-fuzz hair on my lips.

I spent the first 24 hours of my daughter’s life just staring at her, committing her every detail to memory. Her giant forehead, her eyes so obviously mine. I couldn’t believe I’d created a creature so perfect. That a creature so perfect would choose me to bring them into this world.

I didn’t know how to raise a daughter. I had never quite figured out how to be one or how to be a woman, for that matter. It always felt impossibly bunchy. Like when you were a kid and your pants got squished up inside your snowsuit and your socks managed to work their way off of your feet to create a very uncomfortable ball at the toe of your boot.

Motherhood was as close as I ever got to making being assigned female at birth work.

My babies were the only thing that made the discomfort of living a truth that wasn’t mine worth it. Like when you keep sledding because the thrill of the hill is worth the wet feet and cold hands and bunchy snowsuit.

As parents, we spend so much time marvelling at the bits of ourselves we pass down to our babies. My big lips, knobby knees, and sense of humour are just a few of the things I get to pass down to mine.

But we don’t talk enough about our own childhoods. The experiences we have wrestled with, the parts that don’t quite seem to fit—the parts of ourselves that we work so hard to keep to ourselves, terrified that if we breathe life and words into them, we might pass those on to our sweet babies right alongside our hair colour and the ability to roll our tongue.

For me, there is much from my childhood and teen years I prefer to keep tucked away from my babies, some of whom are now full-blown teenagers themselves. There is more darkness in me than I am ready to share with them right now. It wouldn’t be helpful.

I have begun to wonder if the same is true of my own parents. I wonder what parts of their own lives they attempted to shield from me.

What missing pieces would make the puzzle of my childhood make sense.

And I wonder what my own children will hold onto from these years. Which of our rituals and memories will live on in their hearts and in their own family’s traditions? And which moments will be tucked away and kept at a safe distance from their own babies?

As a child, I loved holding my father’s hands. I was in awe of their strength, the sheer size of them, the coarse sandpaper skin, and the grease stains that never seemed to wane. I would place my hands palm-to-palm against his and would love how his long thick fingers eclipsed mine with inches to spare. I wondered and hoped and prayed that one day my own hands would morph into the giant paws stretched out in front of me.

My hands didn’t ever grow as big as the ones I scrutinized as a child. Instead, they stayed slender and small. But as time carried on, they became stronger and my skin also turned to sandpaper, stained with dirt from the garden.

Thirty years later, I look on as my son traces the veins on the back of my hand. We are snuggled together on the couch, candlelight flickering, his big sister holding the room’s attention, legends and lore from the middle school pumping out like a fire hydrant, with laughter and slang I just barely understand.