by Dana Canedy
I had expected the man I met at the door to be somehow different from the one who had walked out of it all those months ago. But I had not expected his suffering to show so soon. What he had seen and done over there I could not imagine. But there was clearly no way to emerge from a world in which you are routinely involved in taking and saving lives and not be transformed. I would try to lighten his burden while he was home, but then he would have to return and endure more of whatever he had been through.
Your father was still asleep when we returned from our walk late that afternoon. You were taking a nap yourself, snug in your stroller. I left you in the living room and snuck quietly into the bedroom. Ever clumsy, I knocked over a candleholder on the dresser and he bolted upright.
“Dana, are you all right?” he shouted.
I put my arms around him, looked into his eyes.
“I’m fine and so are you,” I said. “You’re home now, and you’re safe.”
For the first time since he arrived, we kissed ravenously, like the lovers we had been.
“You’ve been there for me for as long as I’ve known you, even when I didn’t deserve it. Now it’s my turn to take care of you,” I said softly. “I love you, baby.”
He held me so tight it almost hurt, then released me and looked into my face.
“I love you, too, Dana” was all he said.
He would not eat more than a few bites of cornbread and a sip of broth. Then I suggested that he help me with your bath. He undressed you and studied your plump little body, remarking on your chubby knees and long feet. When I half filled your little blue tub on the kitchen counter, your dad watched as you looked startled for a moment before relaxing in the warm water. He watched as I washed your face and hair and then your squirming body. I dried you off and he rubbed lotion on you. I dressed you in a yellow sleeper and sat in a chair in the living room feeding you. Your father was mesmerized by the sight of me nursing his son. His healing had begun.
The warm bath and your full stomach made you drowsy and we laid you in bed between us. You lifted your head and looked at your father and, I will never forget it, a wide smile spread across your face. Then you went to sleep.
Charles took your tiny hand in his and rubbed it. He rubbed your hair and kissed your cheek, staring at you as though he was afraid to even blink for fear of missing a detail.
After a shower, I rubbed baby oil on my body, sprayed myself with perfume, and slipped into a sheer pink nightgown. I was not sure what the night would bring, but I wanted to feel soft and sexy in his arms anyway.
When I returned, I put you in your crib, then got in bed beside Charles. He took me into his arms and kissed me wildly, lifting my nightgown over my head and letting himself rediscover my body. Then he made love to me with a force that startled me. He tried to be tender, but there was a rawness to his longing. It was as if he had been holding on just to make it back to me and release all his pain.
We were asleep but still clinging to each other when you awoke later that night, crying in the darkness. Your father instantly got out of bed and changed your diaper, then handed you to me and watched as I nursed you in the moonlit room. After you fell asleep, he lifted you out of my arms and kissed your cheek before lowering you back into your crib. Then my Charles returned to our bed.
“I’m hungry, too,” he whispered in my ear.
Sometime in the twilight hours I opened my eyes and found Charles staring at me. “Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked.
“I like to wake up and watch you sleep,” he said. “I always have.”
I felt an overpowering passion for this man who would leave again so soon. I hugged him as tight as I could and felt milk trickle down my chest and onto his. He held on, too, so tight it hurt, and it somehow seemed we still could not get close enough. I could barely breathe, but I did not care. My man was home, safely in my arms.
We awoke slowly the next morning and lounged in bed sipping coffee—a normal Sunday for an ordinary family. No bombs would be exploding in Charles’s world that day.
Your dad lay in bed reading to you while I took what might have been the longest shower of my life. I had never been so glad to see wrinkles on my fingers. You were still content by your father’s side when I returned to the bedroom wearing a towel.
“Hey, do I get an honorary membership in your gentlemen’s club?” I said. “I can’t believe this boy has taken to you so quickly. Do you know how many diapers I’ve changed and how many times I’ve whipped out my boobs to feed him?”
“Hey man, what do you think? Should we let her in our club?” Charles asked you.
It was nearly noon before we made our way out the door. I tried to convince Charles to stop at a deli for breakfast. “At least some toast,” I pleaded. But he still insisted that he had no appetite.
We strolled through a park looking out onto the East River, Charles pushing your stroller and my hand rubbing his back. Every few minutes he stopped to make sure the sunshade was still shielding your face. We sat on a bench and watched people jog and walk dogs and toss Frisbees. Things people do in a peaceful place.
A helicopter flew overhead and the sound made Charles flinch. He pulled out his inhaler and breathed in the medicine. I waited for him to speak.
“You know what I was just thinking about?” he eventually said. “All the soldiers who won’t be around to watch their children grow up.”
“We have to count our blessings that you’re not one of them,” I said.
He would only have six weeks left in Iraq when he returned, and then he would be home for good.
“Charles, you just have to get through the end of this. It’s almost over, and this little guy needs his daddy.”
He beamed at you.
“I need you, too,” I said.
“I know,” he said, and then: “So what do you want for Christmas, Ma?”
“You home.”
“We have to do something special,” Charles insisted. “It’ll be Jordan’s first Christmas. I hope you can take some time off. Maybe we can take him on a carriage ride in Central Park.”
“It’s a date.”
As the week went on, I could see the mellow man I had known emerging. Noises no longer startled him. He ate skinless chicken and salad. He still barely put you down.
We headed into the subway one afternoon to take care of the only bit of business on our agenda—correcting your birth certificate. Charles had taken the news of my dust-up at the hospital calmly and wanted to do what was necessary to get it fixed. But when we entered the Office of Vital Records, my spirits sank. Dozens of people were in line, waiting to approach clerks sitting behind glass partitions in what looked like bank teller booths. We filled out a form while we waited and asked strangers in line to sign as witnesses. When we finally made it to one of the windows, I explained our situation to the clerk.
“Put your form in that slot,” the young woman said, unyielding. She looked as if she had heard every manner of paternity story and was simply waiting for quitting time.
“But isn’t there someone we can talk to? He has to go back to Iraq soon.”
“No, there’s no manager on duty,” she said brusquely.
I gave up and slipped our form into the slot, hoping for the best. Then we stepped away from the window and I asked your dad to stop a minute.
“Charles, I hope this will take care of it but, if it doesn’t, I swear to you that I’ll see to it that your name is added to Jordan’s birth certificate. I’m just so sorry it’s not on the original.” I wanted him to hear me make that promise aloud.
“Thanks, Ma. I know you’ll take care of it.”
As we left the building, Charles was enjoying strolling through the downtown city streets and I did not want to spoil his mood with my anger. But inside I was seething. How could it be that no one — not the Congress, the military, hospital administrators—had dealt with the issue of birth certificates for children born to single military fathers away at war? It was
a grave injustice that a blank should appear where a father’s name should be simply because he was in combat when his baby was born. That a marriage license was the only way to avoid the problem was insulting. Worst of all, no one seemed to care.
I was hosting a baby shower for your father that evening, but we had the whole afternoon in front of us, and spent most of it relaxing while you napped. Before I knew it, the clock said 4:00 p.m. Our guests were arriving at 5:30 and I had not even done the grocery shopping, let alone prepare the food. Charles rushed out to the grocery while I fed and bathed you, running back and forth from the kitchen every time the musical mobile on your playpen stopped and you began to wail. I was still wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt when he returned, and was in the process of wiping dribble off my shirt. He smiled and gazed at my lips—an amorous look I knew well.
“Charles, again? Are you kidding? I know you’ve been stuck in the desert with a bunch of men for nine months, but we have guests arriving in less than an hour.”
We were barely dressed when the first guests arrived—Lara, who worked for me, and Ciro, my gay Italian friend, who had a crush on Charles. The two of them pushed past me to your father, hugging him tightly and telling him how good he looked. As more guests arrived, I watched each of them take your father into long, warm embraces. People were taking pictures, giggling, watching him hold you. I realized the evening was not about what I served; it was about sustenance for our spirits. I gave up on cooking and ordered pizza.
It was, after all, a baby shower, so someone ordered Charles to sit in a chair in the middle of the room and open his gifts. I could tell he was embarrassed. He handed you to me, the first time during the evening that you left his arms. He unwrapped some books about fatherhood, a set of tub toys, and a small photo album to fill with pictures from his leave that he could take back to Iraq. He opened my gifts last: a coffee mug with his favorite picture of you and the black leather backpack, which I had filled with diapers and wet wipes, pacifiers and burp cloths.
Charles was not the type to make speeches but he made sure to spend time with each guest. Several times I heard him talking about his soldiers.
“I just hope everybody’s all right when I get back,” he said. “They know it’s almost time to come home, so I have to work hard to keep them focused.”
Lara and Miriam wanted to discuss the politics of the war, but Charles mostly smiled and listened. Katti kissed his cheek and told him she had been lifting him up in prayer.
“Don’t you worry about your family,” she said. “I’ve got your back.”
You fell asleep at sunset, but laughter and your hunger woke you a few hours later. I sat near a window surrounded by friends, rocking you back to sleep. Your father was standing at the edge of the room; he seemed lost in his thoughts. I caught his eye and motioned for him to sit beside me, but he just stood there, watching— savoring the love that filled the room. We ended the night with promises to our friends of an even bigger celebration when your father returned for good. After the final guest left around midnight, your father and I stood in the living room, hugging in silence and gazing out the window for the longest time.
I realized as we settled into bed that night that Charles had not used his inhaler that day. He was eating much more and had resumed ironing my clothes in the mornings.
“I think we need a mommy day tomorrow/’ he said as I lay in his arms.
“That’s not necessary/’ I said. “I’m supposed to be taking care of you, remember?”
Charles stood firm. “Jordan and I are going to take you to get a massage. And then he and I are going to hang out.”
“Hang out where?”
“We’ll go to the park and the bookstore. Just leave me enough milk and diapers.”
I reluctantly agreed. “But I’m going to keep my cell phone near in case you need me/’ I said.
I awoke in the middle of the night with full breasts and pumped the milk he would need for his first father-son outing. Charles offered to keep me company. So he sat next to me in the bathroom and we talked about our perfect baby.
“He looks like you, you know,” Charles said.
“I see you in him, too.”
“Dana, this boy will be a blessing to everyone he meets. He’s special. Remember that I said that”
We fell asleep listening to you breathe in the crib nearby.
A light rain was falling the next morning—sleeping weather.
The rain had dwindled to a mist by early afternoon, and your father bundled you in blankets in your stroller and put the rain cover over it. We walked to a spa that I liked in our neighborhood and he followed me inside, handing the woman at the front desk his credit card and urging me to get a massage, a facial, a manicure, and anything else I wanted.
“Just a massage,” I said. The attention made me blush.
Peeking through the window as the two of you left, I watched your dad push your stroller down the street, wearing his new backpack. Then I wrapped myself in a luxurious robe and sipped water flavored with slices of lemon while I waited for the massage therapist, who led me into a candlelit room. I had just about succeeded in willing myself to relax when the hour-long treatment was over.
Your father arrived precisely when he said he would and I watched him maneuver your stroller through the front door as though he had been doing it for months. He had changed your diaper twice, he said, and fed and burped you. He showed me the books he had bought for you and said that you had charmed the women in the checkout line.
“You should have seen him, flirting with those women,” Charles bragged. “The cashiers kept trying to get people to move up in the line but they were surrounding us, talking about how cute he was. One woman chased me down the street to tell me his sock was falling off.”
“I don’t think I’m letting the two of you out of my sight again,” I teased, imagining my men surrounded by gorgeous, indulgent women.
“Blame your son.”
It might have been his ease with you that day that emboldened me to share with him an idea that I had—that he could take early retirement after he came home and care for you full-time for a couple of years while I worked. He seemed slightly taken aback by the proposal.
“Dana, you know you’re not the type of woman to be married to a man who doesn’t work, and I’m not the type of man to not take care of my family.”
I told him he would be taking care of our family—and, in away, still contributing financially given the astronomical cost of New York child care. I told him he could work on his art and teach—or do whatever he wanted as a second career—when you started school.
“So many black kids grow up without fathers,” I said. “It would be nice if ours had a daddy who was the primary caretaker. And you have nothing to prove about your work ethic.”
He said he would consider it—but I knew that for a man as old-fashioned as Charles, the notion was radical.
I had planned to make a simple salad for lunch and save my appetite for our time alone that night at our favorite Mexican restaurant while you stayed home with a babysitter. But your father suggested that we make it a family lunch instead of a dinner date. He didn’t want to be without you for even a few hours. So we hailed a cab and took you along on our date.
As we gazed at you cooing in your baby carrier, we agreed that we did not need an evening out alone to reconnect romantically.
“I think we’ve already taken care ofthat,” I said.
He smiled at me bashfully and fed me a salsa-dipped tortilla chip.
“So when do you want to get married?” Charles asked.
I told him I had picked the perfect date: June 9, a Saturday— the day that fell between my birthday on june 8 and his on June 10. He loved that idea.
I asked what he thought of our original plan to get married on a cruise ship and invite our families along. We could have a reception in New York when we got back.
“You just had my baby, so you get whatever you want,” he said.
“I guess I should start looking for a dress.”
“Then I guess I better look for atuxedo.”
“No,” I said emphatically. “Anyone can wear a tux. I’m marrying a soldier. Nothing would make me prouder than to walk down the aisle and see you in your military dress blues.”
Charles grinned.
I asked what he wanted to do the next day. He could think of only one thing: buying winter clothes for you.
“You want to buy winter clothes in August?”
He nodded. I did not ask why.
We had not been shopping together since I was pregnant and it felt nice doing it again as new parents. The winter merchandise had begun to arrive, and Charles filled a cart with jackets and mittens and long-sleeved shirts and cotton sweat suits, as well as socks and diapers and a larger baby tub. He kept asking whether you needed anything else and I kept saying you did not.
He was simply being a dutiful dad, I told myself. But I couldn’t help feeling concerned about why he was thinking so far ahead. Was he planning for a future that didn’t include himself?
“Dana, I want to write you a check,” he said when we got home. “I want you to have half of my combat pay”
I resisted. We still had some of the checks he had given me. He reminded me that I would be going back to work and would need to pay for your babysitter.
“I’m not taking half your combat pay,” I insisted.
“Dana, please. It’s for our son. And you should buy something for yourself, too.”
He wrote a check and tried to hand it to me. I waved him away.
“Take it, Dana,” he said. Finally, I did.
Then Charles began to talk about life insurance. I began to pace.
“Charles, if something happened to you, you know I would only use that money to take care of Jordan.”
He put his hands on my shoulders, his expression as serious as I had ever seen it.
“Dana, that money is for you, too,” he said. “It’s for you, too.”
I did not want to discuss it. I was not accustomed to taking money from a man, but that was not what was making me anxious. I was unnerved by Charles’s sudden desire to stock up on winter baby clothes and discuss death benefits. I could finally count the time until he came home in weeks instead of months. What was the point?