Metronome

The other night I had a dream that I was sleeping over at my grandparents’ house. In my dream I woke up and my older daughter was crying. I got out of bed to help her and my husband said he’d like to help, too. I hoisted him onto my back and carried him over to her. 

My daughter has been taking piano lessons and it’s offered me a good metaphor. I am the metronome of my family. In the mornings before school I keep the time: one, two, three, brush your teeth, four, five, six, put on your coat. On a bigger scale, too, I am always holding the beat: scheduling the pediatrician visits, ensuring the kids are wearing the right size clothes, ordering the specific brand of vitamins my daughter likes before we run out of the bottle.

My older daughter got hurt the other day and cried. Later she told me that she cried because it hurt but also because she was embarrassed. It’s a little heartbreaking, knowing she’s old enough to have that feeling. 

I told her about the time that I was at my grandparents’ country club, eating at a picnic table by the pool. I was probably thirteen. I could not have articulated it at the time, but going swimming at my grandparent’s country club was how I began to develop class consciousness, watching all those rich kids in their fancy pool. There were some older boys playing a game in which they’d throw a football to their friend on the diving board, who would try to catch it before he jumped off. On one round the diver missed the ball and it hit me on the side of the head. Like my daughter, I was more embarrassed than hurt. 

As I was telling my daughter this, I realized that I’ve spent my entire life feeling as if I deserved to be hit in the head with that football. It’s not as if I thought of that moment often, in fact it had been years since I’d thought of it at all. But deep down, below the level of consciousness, I knew I was the type of person who was due to be hit with a football in the head at any moment, who should be hit with a football, who deserved it.

Talking with my daughter, I felt the weight of that belief leaving me. I didn’t tell her any of this, of course, but I walked away from the conversation lighter. Getting hit with a football by some rich boys at a country club was obviously a dumb fluke, not a lifetime pronouncement on my character. Isn’t it funny that I thought that it was?

Maybe I’m wrong about the metronome thing, too, I don’t know. I do think mothers carry more mental load, are more often the default parent, are often the ones keeping time. I also don’t think there’s anything my husband can do about it. 

A couple years ago I got a parenting book out of a Little Free Library near my house, which recommended that fathers spend “at least an hour” with their infants per day. Presumably the mother handled the other 23 hours. The book was published in 1992. 

If we’re only a generation removed from that level of advice, what’s a dad to do? Tony is a dedicated father, better than the vast majority of fathers I interact with. And still I feel, rightly or wrongly, like the metronome. 

This will change as our children age. Already my older daughter doesn’t need the metronome to play on beat as often as she did when she first started piano lessons. Someday my family will keep time without me, all on their own. The music will swell and I’ll look on, full of pride. 

My grandparents were rich. I feel compelled to apologize for that, to tell you that they spent a lot of their time doing things to meaningfully improve people’s lives, by passing good laws, creating community programs, and setting up and running a sliding scale health clinic. I have this thing about rich people. It started at the country club but it didn’t end there.

 I went to a private liberal arts college. There I lived in dormitories and sat in classes with students who made my rich grandparents look poor. I washed those students’ dishes in the dining hall as part of my financial aid package. It was sort of like being hit in the head with a football every day for four years. 

 I met my husband around this time. He was working three different jobs to pay off his student loan debt. He had been a scholarship kid at a private high school. Meeting him after my rich college boyfriends was like finally washing ashore after nearly drowning. 

My grandma is still alive, though she has advanced Alzheimer’s. My grandpa died last year. I dream about him often. When I’m not dreaming about him, I’m dreaming about their house. The back staircase, the circus room, the carpet in the dining room. In one of my dreams my grandpa had long gray hair. 

My other grandparents, my mom’s parents, were poor. I was in my teens and twenties when they died. I don’t dream about them or their house, but I did name my younger daughter after that grandma. 

My older daughter found out that Santa isn’t real a few weeks ago. She cried and cried. She asked me if anything magic is real, and I told her “yes, yes!,” so desperate was I to buoy her. 

I tried to give her examples of real-life magic: space travel, deep sea exploration, new species that have yet to be discovered in the rainforest. None of it mattered to her. 

Then I tried to tell her about love, how it really is magic, the way you can love different people in different ways all throughout your life. It’s magic how love changes, how love can be being the metronome and the weight of the football lifting, how it can be dreams, or names, or having too much money or too little. She didn’t care about that either. But she will care about it one day. I know that for sure.