I went out the door and took a left, heading for nothing in particular, just hoping to clear my head. About a quarter of a block down the street, I noticed a kid’s clothing store and went inside. I hadn’t intended on doing any shopping until I saw the place, but I figured I might as well pick up a few things for Madeline while I was trying to distract myself. I spent a few minutes browsing a rack near the front of the store, choosing a pink onesie with a green cartoon character on the front. As I made my way toward the register, I bumped into Windy and her daughter.
“Hi,” I said.
“Oh. Hello.”
“Just so you know, you didn’t get the full story in the coffee shop,” I abruptly told her. For the first time I wanted to tell a complete stranger everything, up front and without prompting. This felt different.
For the next fifteen minutes, Windy held her daughter tight as I shared with her that my seemingly picture-perfect family was not what she had been led to believe. When I finished, she wiped the tears from her eyes and reached into her purse for a pen and paper. She wrote down all of my information and promised to get in touch so we could catch up again soon.
Within a few days I heard from her, and she told me that she belonged to an online parenting group. It had started out as a resource for moms who were breast-feeding, but it had evolved into much more, with discussions about everything from what kind of stroller to buy to where to go on a play date. She said it had a huge membership and that it would be really helpful for me to join them. Help sounded great. Windy told me that she was trying to get me into the group, but she warned me that even though there would be a lot of practical information I could use, there would also be a lot of talk about vaginas and menstrual cycles and breast-feeding.
“No problem,” I told her. “I lived with a woman for a very long time. I can take it.”
But the next time I heard from her, she told me that although the overwhelming majority of the women in the group wanted me in, the leaders would not allow it. They had decided it wasn’t a good idea to have a man in their midst because there was so much personal talk among them, and they didn’t want other women to feel inhibited. Bullshit. My wife was dead and I didn’t give a shit about women’s body parts or bodily fluids or any other personal talk. All I wanted was access to their valuable information about parenting in Los Angeles, setting up play dates, and finding good day care.
“Matt, I’m just floored by this,” Windy said. “I know two gay men who adopted, and they won’t let them in, either. So you know what? Fuck ’em. We’re going to start our own group.”
If Liz had been there, we probably would not have been seeking out such help, but without her I not only wanted this support system, I needed it. I knew it would be invaluable as I tried to raise Madeline on my own.
And so Windy and I began to meet for coffee to talk about how the group would take shape. It started small but continued to grow, mostly thanks to Windy’s efforts and organization. The more she and I planned, the closer we got, and eventually Windy shared with me that she was a lesbian. Strange as it may sound, that gave us a lot of common ground to walk on, as neither of us was necessarily what people thought us to be when we passed them on the street with a kid. The potential assumptions about me as the father of a baby girl were obvious: he’s lazy; his wife must be at work; he doesn’t do shit. As for Windy, most would figure that she was a stay-at-home mom, that her husband was the breadwinner, and that she and her partner were just friends.
One day while we sat at the coffee shop talking, Windy’s daughter, almost two at the time, was in the playroom with some other children. A guy walked in and saw her picking up toys. “Your daddy must be so proud of you!” he exclaimed.
We looked at one another and just burst out into raucous laughter. I felt I had more in common with a gay parent than I did with anybody else, and Windy became part of my chosen family. It was a fantastic feeling—no matter how different we might have seemed, we had a bond. Without Liz, I was now the one responsible for creating a community for Madeline and me. Without her, I was learning, I had to be the friendly one.
When I started to blog again, my community expanded even further, and my encounters were no longer limited to people in my geographic location. I hadn’t thought that blogging was something I would continue after Liz died. On March 28, A.J. posted the obituary that his wife had written about Liz, the one that I still have trouble getting through. I believed at the time that it might be the blog’s final post, but a few weeks later I found myself turning back to it in hopes of some kind of emotional release. In the days after Liz’s death, writing my thoughts down—like the thoughts that had turned into the words written on her funeral program—had been really effective in helping me deal. As time passed and I continued to write, the blog just seemed like a natural place to put them.
It felt great. At first I thought there would be nothing much to say, but with Maddy home, something in me wanted, or maybe needed, to record everything. Were my posts revelatory? Not exactly. But having an outlet where I could say whatever I wanted and work through my constantly shifting emotional state was invaluable. I knew it when I wrote that first post after Liz’s death; I knew it again the next day, when I wrote a post about how the better of Madeline’s parents had died; and I knew it every day thereafter, as I rambled about life with my daughter.
Years earlier, the blog had originally been for photos of my travels, and then, when Liz went into the hospital, it was a convenient way to keep all of our friends and family updated on her status. But now, it was different. As I wrote, I realized that the blog was becoming Madeline’s baby book. No, it wouldn’t contain locks of hair or tiny impressions of her handprints and footprints, like my mom has of me. Instead, it would be a chronicle of our day-to-day lives. And this way, I wouldn’t have to rely on my memory for everything. I could record what her first word was, how much she weighed at her three-month doctor appointment, how tall she was, and the circumference of her head. Those are things you think you’ll remember forever, but if you don’t write them down, they disappear.
At first all I wanted was to give Maddy something tangible to refer back to someday. It was 80 percent for her and 20 percent for my friends and family—well, mostly for my family, because my friends don’t read that kind of shit. In the weeks and months immediately following Liz’s death, it was important for me to let everyone close to me know that I was surviving, and that our baby was doing well. I was writing down the things we did to prove to them, and eventually to Maddy, too, that after Liz died I didn’t just curl up into a ball while my kid jammed forks into the light socket in the living room. It felt especially important for Liz’s parents. I wanted them to know more about their granddaughter than they otherwise would have—even more than they would have if Liz were alive. I wanted to reassure them that they would always be a part of our lives.
Every new parent gets advice—from their own parents, from friends who have recently had children, from random people in the grocery store who tell you that children should have socks on even though it’s ninety degrees outside (yes, that actually happened). And while some of it bordered on the ludicrous (because children like to play with their toes, by the way), I needed all the advice I could get. Writing my own blog made me look at other blogs out there, and I soon discovered that my hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, had a website with an excellent parenting blog. It was run by two women, but they didn’t just write about mothers. They also wrote about fathers and their relationships to their children. I e-mailed them:
Hello…
I just came across your blog…
I’m a proud new father (originally from MPLS, now in Los Angeles) who is definitely in the process of managing changing priorities. I’m doing it on my own (my wife passed away the day after our baby was born).
I’ll be reading your blog often (while baby sleeps). I’m finding much of the content very helpful.
I’m writing a bit about my experi
ences. Some of the language is a little blue, but I can’t help it.
It’s been tough.
Matt
The next morning they wrote back asking if they could put my story on their website. It ended up both there and on the front page of the paper. The reaction was amazing: that same day, my blog picked up tons of new readers, and after that it just continued to grow.
I was grateful. Now, I’d made a connection to a whole community of caring people online. To write up a quick post and receive a bunch of responses with advice and reassurance really validated the work I was doing as a father. So I solicited more. I used the blog to ask questions, often beginning “What do I do…?” I always filed every answer away, just in case I might need to refer back to something later. Eventually, I could get sound advice within minutes from people who were reading my blog, even if it was three in the morning in Los Angeles. It was awesome.
This outpouring of advice and kindness was yet another demonstration of the power of community, and of community as extended family. I was lucky to have a great group of friends nearby who did their best to make our lives easier, but most of our family was in Minnesota, and it was impossible for them to help us on a daily basis. And because I didn’t belong to a church or any neighborhood groups, there was no organized effort to assist us. Nevertheless, I’d stumbled onto these sympathetic individuals online and expanded my circle far beyond what would have been possible before the Internet age. I received e-mails from Indonesia, Thailand, Europe, South America—from all over the world. What began as something I wanted for my daughter, my parents, my in-laws, and my friends became a forum of communication for and with parents everywhere. I had built my own virtual support system.
Many of these people also wanted to help in a material way. Just after Liz died, A.J. had set up a PayPal donation link on my blog with the money going directly into a memorial fund in her name, and people had also been sending money separately to help me raise my daughter. There was an address listed for the bank through which the fund was set up, and soon people were also sending actual stuff there.
Tons of it.
They also began to ask for my home address so they could send us stuff directly. Initially I said no. I didn’t want there to be any possible insinuation that I was profiting from my wife’s death, even if those profits were coming in the form of diapers, formula, and clothing for our daughter. That was something I could never, ever do. And to be honest, I was a bit leery about giving my address out to total strangers. It wasn’t that I distrusted them, or that I was worried that they’d show up at my house and attempt to steal my baby. But making friends with strangers had been Liz’s job.
Tom set me straight. “Matt,” he said, “you have to let people help. If they’re asking for your address, you give it to them.”
“I don’t know. I just feel a little weird just handing my address out to random Internet people.”
“Matt, this isn’t just about you and Madeline right now. This is about them, and their desire to help a human being who is in pain. Let them help you.”
He was right. Our conversation allowed me to realize that there was absolutely nothing wrong with accepting help. So I threw off the shackles of the possible negative perceptions of others, and opened myself up to the kindness and support of total strangers.
And help they did. Every time I walked up to the porch, I found boxes sitting there. Stuff came in constantly, so often that I couldn’t keep up with opening all of it. Several people mailed me perishable items that I unfortunately didn’t always get to in a timely manner. A woman from Duluth, Minnesota, sent me all the fixings for chicken noodle soup after I had written that I was sick. I didn’t open the care package until months later, unfortunately to find rotting garlic and a leaking container of chicken stock.
Some gifts were incredibly thoughtful but simply too difficult for me to deal with. One of Liz’s best friends from high school put together a book written from Liz’s point of view with photos captioned “I love you,” “I’m sorry I’m not here,” stuff like that. It was very kind and very touching, but for many months it was much too painful—I wasn’t yet strong enough to confront what was in it. More than one person sent me a pillow with an image of Liz on it. I know they meant well, but for me that was just a bit creepy. But at the heart of this outpouring of generosity was something very basic and very human: the fundamental goodwill of each sender. People wanted to help, and so I let them—Tom helped me understand that they felt good by reaching out to Madeline and me.
It quickly became impossible for me to look at these expressions of sympathy and generosity without thinking about how I could help other people. Something about all this support made me feel ready to focus on others in need. How could I acknowledge these many acts of kindness? I didn’t have the money to assist anyone financially, but I had all of this stuff—more than Maddy and I could ever possibly use.
The answer was to give back. Through the blog I had become friends with a woman in New York City whose boyfriend got her pregnant and then took off. When she decided to leave the city for Oregon because she couldn’t afford to stay in her apartment, I shipped her seven or eight giant boxes of clothes. I sent many more to a battered women’s shelter nearby because someone explained to me that the women there had often abruptly fled their abusive partners with their children. They arrived at the shelter with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Just like people wanted to help me and Maddy, I wanted to help the people around us, and so I passed on what I received to those who needed it more. It became a really important part of what the blog brought to my life, and an important part of my beginning to heal after Liz’s death. Concentrating my attention on others allowed me to remove some of the focus from my own situation, and finally I felt less like a victim of my horrible circumstances.
Chapter 15
she’s got so
much of her mom
in her.
as a kid,
sitting on a swing
(more than capable of propelling herself)
liz
would say, “somebody push me!”
she wanted attention
and loved having
people around.
madeline is obviously no
different.
her cries said,
“somebody hold me!”
so i did.
almost all day.
Though I had many sources of advice, there were some things I was beginning to realize I could figure out for myself. While some parents claimed allegiance to Dr. Spock, I was more from the MacGyver school of parenting, which was less about having an arsenal of baby equipment and more about troubleshooting with whatever was available. Early on, I took Maddy to a Dodgers game. This was something that Liz and I had imagined doing with our future child from the moment we put the down payment on our first year of season tickets—way before Liz was even pregnant. And just like in our dream, Maddy was dressed in a pink and white pinstriped Dodgers onesie and wrapped in a free blanket we had been given on one of the team’s many promotional nights. Of course, the dream included the two of us here with our baby, but in reality Liz was dead and I was at the stadium with her friend, Diane. Madeline was still so small that she was only drinking formula. I had remembered the diapers, I had remembered the wipes, I had remembered the formula, but I had forgotten the bottle.
What the fuck does a guy do for a kid who doesn’t have a bottle to drink from? I felt like an asshole. She needed to eat, but I didn’t want to leave the game, defeated by my forgetfulness and ruining my daughter’s first Dodgers experience. I sat there for a couple of minutes thinking that there had to be a solution.
I bought a bottle of water from the concession stand, which I needed for the formula anyway, and I asked for one of the lapel pins behind the glass case—the kind they sell with the Dodgers logo. I removed the pin from the packaging and sterilized it with a lighter borrowed from a man behind me in
line, and then jammed it through the water bottle cap. I mixed the water with the formula and squirted it into Maddy’s mouth, just a little bit at a time. I felt as victorious as I used to when I beat Liz in a game of Scattergories—I had to think on the spot. It worked for us, but that’s not something you’re going to see in any parenting book.
And once during our travels, I didn’t realize until we were already on the plane that the pants I had put Madeline in were way too big for her tiny waist. With her other clothes in our checked luggage, I had to come up with some way to keep her pants from continuously falling down. After considering—and ultimately deciding against—tying my BlackBerry USB charger around her waist, I decided the simplest and most effective way to deal with the problem was simply to button her onesie over her pants. After I posted a photo of it on the blog, some of my readers questioned whether or not I had any idea how to dress a baby girl, but others defended my function-driven sensibilities and left comments telling me that they were now dressing their babies the same way. Well, with that slick move, Madeline and I had accidentally started a mini fashion trend. I used to make fun of Liz when she wore heels in the rain or didn’t wear a hat in winter because she was concerned her hair would get messed up, taunting her with the words “fashion over function.” Liz would have been proud of me for figuring out such a practical solution, and she certainly would have found my effort adorable, but she most definitely would have questioned my style sense.
With each experience Madeline and I had together, my confidence level increased. After a while, I kind of felt like I could handle any parenting challenge thrown my way—what a big difference a few months had made. Though I initially had been preoccupied with the possibility of ruining or breaking my daughter, through everything she was thriving. Each successive trip to the doctor brought more words of encouragement, and with that encouragement came more confidence, too.
Two Kisses for Maddy Page 13