Spain Dad, a baby blog

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Totem Pole Vancouver by Kevin Grahame.

“I think we need to hire someone to clean the house,” April said as she stood in the middle of the living room bouncing Teo and surveying the aftermath of three weeks at home with a newborn.

The breakfast dishes were still on the table, including an orange juice glass tipped over and lying in a puddle. The drying rack, which has become a permanent fixture in front of the window, had clothes drying on it—not hanging by pins, but simply dropped in a heap on top of the rack. The stroller was parked in front of the kitchen door with bags of groceries in back, and instead of putting the groceries away, I had already gotten used to digging through the bags before each meal to find what I was looking for. And then there was one of Alleke’s tubs of toys sitting in the middle of the floor in the living room. It was empty because everything that had been in it was now littered around the room, as if Alleke had deliberately decided to decorate the room by stringing her toys all around—like hanging tinsel on a Christmas tree. There was a small Christmas tree, too, which was nicely decorated, but half buried behind the empty cardboard boxes we had drug out of storage to decorate it.

These were the sorts of things I noticed when April made her comment, but she, being the one more interested in cleanliness than tidiness, was talking about the crumbs under the table and the dust on the shelves and the sticky kitchen floors and the scummy bathtub.

Either way you looked at it, we were living on a landfill. It was impossible to walk from one end of the house to the other without stepping on something.

So, I sent April to bed at 8:30, put Alleke to sleep, and carried Teo around in a baby sling while I picked up and swept and mopped and scrubbed the house. I finished at one in the morning because I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.

April woke up the next morning, and she was a new person, all smiles and perky. She gave me a big kiss because, as most married men will tell you, wives like a clean house more than they like sex.

That afternoon, however, I got the feeling that something very bad was about to happen. I had been cleaning up and running errands and making meals and playing with the kids and using up lots of energy, and like the minivan that my parents’-in-law drive that has a bad gas gauge, I had no idea how much gas I had left until I was sputtering and bumbling off the highway onto the shoulder where I came to a complete stop. I had nothing left to give. I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes, and when April came over and handed Teo to me, I handed him right back.

“I need to take a shower,” April argued, and I snapped back, “and I need a break.”

April’s smile cracked, and she burst into tears, and she didn’t stop for hours. Alleke was pulling on my shirt and asking why Mom was crying, and when I hollered, “Not now!” and she ran off to her room and slammed the door, I thought, “Good, that’s one less person to worry about,” only to discover later that she had taken her markers and drawn on the wall and dumped out a make-up kit on her bed and painted her nails, which are two things she knows she’s not allowed to do. We were all crying for attention.

Finally, we sat together on the futon in Alleke’s bedroom. April sighed and said, “I know it’s unfair for me to ask you not to be tired and not to rest, but if I’m honest, I can’t handle that right now. I can’t take care of you too. I need you to be strong.”

She was silent for a moment, and then smiled through more tears. “Remember Sherri emailing after your post about the totem pole to say that actually the face at the bottom is the most important because it holds up the rest?  Right now, you really are the bottom of the totem pole in this family.”