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My father was a brand-new dad, living with my mom and my older sister, Felicie, in a third-floor apartment in Providence. One hot August night, Felicie was up and crying. It was Dad’s turn, so he pulled himself out of bed, stumbled into her room, lifted her from her crib, and carried her out into the living room where he began walking in circles, patting her back and repeating soothing words.
She kept crying. He had been flat asleep when he heard her. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but he knew he’d have to get up absolutely no later than 6:30 AM if he was going to make it to work on time. The pressure to provide can hit a young father pretty quickly. One moment you just want to make enough to pay your own rent and buy a new suit, and the next two other humans are depending on you for food and shelter. You know your weaknesses; you know you’re no Superman, that you still feel like a boy in many ways, and that there must be a million other men who could better play the role of Sole Provider. Yet here you are, and your daughter’s crying, and you just want to go to sleep so you can get up and try to be the man you’re supposed to be.
Somewhere in the mounting delirium of sleepless parenting, he walked my crying sister past an open window. She was wailing in his ear and all he wanted was for that wailing to sop. For one instant, his eyes landed on the window and he saw himself chucking Felicie out of it.
It was as if he’d fallen half-asleep, and that dream, that nightmare, had shocked him awake. He stopped walking, held her tighter, and closed the window. Before long she had quieted and he laid her back in her crib and returned to bed.
He couldn’t fall asleep. How could he? He’d just imagined doing the very worst thing a father could do. He spent the next day tormented by what he’d imagined. He felt he should tell my mother, but he feared she’d never let him in the room with Felicie again. How could he explain it in a way she’d understand, that she wouldn’t fear she’d accidentally married a monster? A poor provider’s one thing; a child-murder is quite another.
By that night the guilt was too much to ignore. He just had to tell her and suffer whatever disgust and horror she sent his way. Before bed, he sat my mom down and began telling her how hard it had been with Felicie last night, that he was exhausted, that he’d been thinking about how early he had to get up. “And then, Judy, I walked past the window and for a second–just a second–I thought of tossing her out of it.”
My mother put her face in her hands. “Oh, thank god!” she said. “I thought I was the only one who’d imagined that.”
I’m happy to report my parents managed to raise my sister, brother, and me without tossing any of us out a window. They managed to raise us despite getting divorced when I was seven, despite bankruptcy and depression and my father’s three other marriages. They managed to raise us even though they were not always happy, or like their jobs, or feel like they had enough money. In short, they raised us even though they were human.
One of the first shocking discoveries every parent makes is that having a child doesn’t actually make you a more balanced and serene and wise person. You’re still just you, only with a kid to take care of.
Somewhere in that, however, I think you can learn something if you’re open to it. Children arrive trusting you in a way that if they knew you better they might not. Though plenty have abused that trust, it’s hard not to want to rise to meet it, to find the kindness and patience that is the best reflection of a child’s natural unconditional love. You don’t always know you have patience until you find it, until you walk with them crying through the night, past all the open windows tempting you to believe there is something more important in the world than what you hold in your arms.
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William Kenower is the author of Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt, Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence, Write Within Yourself: An Author’s Companion, and the Editor-in-Chief of Author magazine. In addition to his books, he’s been published in The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, Edible Seattle, Parent Map, and has been a featured blogger for the Huffington Post.
