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I remember vividly the first time my 3-year-old daughter Alice told me she didn’t love me. She had little pink hearts on both her shirt and the blanket she was wrapped up in, as if painting a tableau of parental mockery just for me. We’d been arguing over why she couldn’t sleep with a cracker in her hand (“it might make your bed messy” was not convincing enough, and she clung to it tightly).
The words emerged slowly, meticulously, and with focused intent: “Papa: I don’t love you.”
She was taken aback almost more than I was, as evidenced by the look of tentative fortitude on her face, like she’d challenged me to a duel but was feeling around for the rapier she hoped she had on her belt. She’d experimented with mean words before, but had shied away from that particular affront. Her developing mind understood that ground had been broken: she’d opened up a brave new world, and the evident shock that grabbed hold of my entire being cemented the fact that she now had something substantive, exciting, and powerful in her arsenal.
The words began to come more easily as the weeks went by. Her preference for her Mama wasn’t new, but the way she was spurning me was morphing in tune with her intellect and vocabulary. A part of me admired—and still do—the creative ways in which she strikes me down, even as little specks of my self-assurance peel off to go floating through my soul system like stones rip apart a kidney.
The manner in which Alice delivers her biting, harrowing aspersions is no less important than the actual words she uses. If she can manage it, she’ll make sure her snotty, tear-laden face is visible to herself in the mirror—she’s an admirer of her own work—and she’ll assume a stance not unlike a catcher squatting only halfway. If she’s really mad she’ll stomp her feet a few times, before ultimately delivering a simmering invective.
“I don’t love you!” is still the most obvious and cliché, now shouted with confidence, as well as thespian-like inflections and tonal shifts. “I. don’t. Want. Papa. Here!” is another, usually with 9-months-pregnant pauses in between each word. There are various versions of why she wants Mama with her instead of me, and an occasional profanity-laced stream of new and unmastered vocabulary (“What the hook! Poopy butt! Papa is a farty yunky papa!”)
But this high-intensity circumstance of big feelings—combined with the coiled up tensile strength of a mustang—is not actually where she inflicts the most damage. No, she saves the more cutting jabs for times of serenity, when we’re playing calmly together or sitting on the heater with a blanket on a cold morning.
“I love you, Alice,” I’ll offer. She’ll smile and look at me with her big blue eyes.
“Thanks, but I love Mama.”
She’ll lean over and hug me with her tiny little arms, and repeat the same phrase in a breathy whisper, almost to herself, as if she’s falling asleep to a mantra:
“Thanks. But I love Mama.”
These little moments are sprinkled throughout the day with cold, brutal regularity, almost as if she wants to dole them out so I can never get too comfortable. If the job of a kid is to push boundaries and ensure her parents are always on their toes, then Alice has selected the right profession.
I brace for the nightly discussion of whose turn it is to read books with her before bed; because time and dates are still nebulous and bewildering phenomena to Alice, she still asks “mama book or papa book?” every night at dinner.
When it’s my turn, I suppress a wince and say “Papa book.” Though I’ve tried saying it calmly, excitedly, tentatively, in a monster voice, and a few dozen other ways, the reactions are almost always the same: either a dramatic, bad-news-from-the-war collapse to the ground in a heap, or a more subdued weeping into her arms, with occasional head-lifts to reveal a grief-stricken look of complete indignation.
What’s maybe worse, though, is when the answer is “Mama book.” The look of relief and joy on Alice’s face is palpable, because nothing is ever unpalpable with a three-year-old. The palp is particularly strong with this one, and the celebrations she launches into would almost certainly earn her an Unsportsmanlike Conduct penalty on a football field.
I’m under no illusion that Alice doesn’t love me. She tells me she loves me with increasing regularity—and randomness—and the hugs she gives are tight, warm, intense, and breathtaking. I’m her Papa, and she loves me. I know it, I see it, and I believe it. But there are times when I find myself questioning it, and to be honest, I always imagined that those moments would come when she was a teenager.
But Alice wasted no time: her outward preference for her Mama has been around since day one. Alice would probably have kept breastfeeding until college if circumstances had permitted, and although that’s not the only reason she clung to my wife more than me, it certainly didn’t help my cause. Present Baby Alice with a choice of my gruff beard and clumsy man-hands or the soothing softness and dulcet tones of her mother, and Mama—in conjunction with the boob—wins every time.
I don’t mean to present my wife’s standing as the unequivocally better side. While being snubbed hurts, the flipside is no picnic. Mama cherishes the connection, but it can be suffocating, physically and emotionally; add to that the mental gymnastics she performs when deciding whether to say “Alice, that’s not a nice way to talk to Papa” or let it go in the name of peace, and she has a tough job too. I see her wrestling with her role, when to step in and when to let me try to see it through to the end, and I love her even more for the sensitivity she brings. She knows it’s hard, and when she gets little tastes, she feels it too.
This all came to a head of sorts during a recent episode, during which I found myself trying to convince Alice that it would be ME, her Papa, who would “wipe her booty butt” after she’d pooped. She’d announced to the world at large that she needed to go potty, and that (despite the closed door and distance from anyone else) she “needed a little bit space.” When she was done, she insisted loudly that Mama would do the honors, but as Mama was busy feeding my baby son, it was just me.
My options were limited: let Alice do it herself (off the table for hygienic reasons), wait it out, or conjure up a winning proposal. While I was mulling it over, my daughter’s butt in the air, tears beginning to stream down her face as she realized her Mama might not be coming, Alice threw down one of her most challenging gauntlets: “Papa, you aren’t ALLOWED to wipe my booty.”
That one pinched a nerve. I launched into a Very Fatherly speech that was blustery at best, something about how this was not her choice and by golly she’d stand there and let me help her. Forgetting that strict tones tend to have adverse effects on her, I watched in horror as she proceeded to smear poop all over the toilet seat, floor, walls, and her clothes, while she conducted a manically valiant attempt to wipe. She goes from 0 to 60 faster than a sports car, and she was well past the speed limit at this point: she was a snot-nosed, poop-smeared, hiccupping mess of a human, and when all was said and done, I asked her:
“Alice… do you just want a big hug?”
She burst into even bigger tears and shrieked “YEEESSSSS” and threw herself into my arms, and for a little moment, the details of what was happening were of no consequence to me. It’s a testament to my wife that when she saw my poop-streaked shirt, she knew enough not to ask questions. If it weren’t for pyrrhic parental victories, I might have none.
The love of my child seems fickle, even if it might actually be the steadiest thing in the beautifully surreal and sometimes anarchic world I call my home life. Alice is old enough now to use it as leverage, as a bargaining chip, and as ammunition. It can be soul-crushing, particularly because she’s too young to read my emotions beyond a surface level, and when her ripostes align with those times when I feel inadequate as a parent, a little part of me feels like it’s died.
But it’s love all the same. And when Alice gives it, she gives it hard: her expressions of affection are every bit as powerful as the punches she levels. When she’s in the mood to proffer love, the world melts away, and her tiny heartbeat is like a metronome that keeps careful track of the capricious nature of the moment. She sighs, gives kisses, smiles, and laughs a kind of belly laugh I used to associate only with forced guffaws in old movies.
I’m her Papa. Whether or not she understands all that I do for her, she appreciates me. She doesn’t know how many times I bounced her to sleep as a baby on an exercise ball, destroying my back; she doesn’t know how many lost hours of sleep she’s caused, how much her screaming tantrums really get to me, how much my life has changed since she came along. And she doesn’t need to: that’s not her burden, it’s mine, and it’s a beautiful one that I chose.
When Alice hurts, she stings. But when she loves, it’s magic.
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