I’m thinking, That’s all well and good, but what I’m gonna do is walk into that private room you have in the back and unload the most vile substance my body has been able to conjure in thirty-seven years of existence and then I’m gonna leave and I’m not gonna purchase anything and then I’m gonna drive as far away from this location as physically possible to forget this ever happened.
But what I say is: “Do you have the code?”
I get back in the car and continue driving, now nursing a chamomile tea. I walk into our apartment after seven hours and I collapse onto our couch. Jen, who has the sweetest, most soft-spoken, thread-counted-est voice, walks in and says…
“GET THE FUCK OFF THE COUCH!”
I say, “Clo, I have the flu.”
It sits there for a moment.
Jen says, “If Oona gets the flu, I’m the one who’s gonna be up all night holding her until my arm is numb while my other arm is rummaging through the closets in the darkness for the thermometer and the baby Tylenol. And it’s scary because I have no idea what I’m doing. And I’ve tried to make it so this doesn’t change the way we live our lives. I don’t wake you up. I change the diapers. I give her baths. But right now, you’re in the way.”
I start to get up.
She says, “You know that story you tell everyone about how I’m at the table breastfeeding Oona and you’re doing the dishes and I say ‘You’re doing a great job,’ and you say, ‘Thanks,’ and I say, ‘Not you’?
The only part that isn’t true is that you do the dishes.”
I’ve been defeated.
I can’t muster a response.
I roll off the couch and walk into my dungeon.
I lock the door. I get into my straitjacket. I can’t believe my own thought.
I think, I get why dads leave.
THE EIGHTH REASON
I’m only comfortable writing, “I get why dads leave,” because I’m not gonna leave. I love my wife and my daughter and where would I go?
Who’s gonna zip up my sleeping bag?
I’m not gonna be out on the town saying, “What do you say we get outta here and you put on my mittens?”
“You mean a condom?”
“Not exactly.”
I’m comfortable saying it because I’m not going to leave, but for the first time in my life I get it. I know that’s a sensitive subject, especially if your dad left or your mom or your husband or your wife. So right off the bat, fuck them.
But if your dad left I want you to know it’s not because of you.
It’s because you exist.
I’ll clarify that point because it’s a subtle distinction. It’s not because of your personality or that you don’t deserve love. It’s that your dad maybe didn’t want to be a dad and he doesn’t understand causality that well and now you’re alive and I think that’s great. So who cares if your dad’s not around, because who needs a guy like that anyway?
That said, in this moment, I get it.
Because this person I’ve sworn to spend the rest of my life with, whom I’ve shared thousands of hours on a couch with, who has saved my best friend’s life, is in the greatest love affair of her entire life, that I’m watching through a window. And all day people come up to me and say, “Is this the most joy you’ve ever experienced?”
And I have to say, “It’s the most joy. I didn’t know what joy was. Until now. And now I know what it is. It’s this!”
I’m literally empty. Just bones and garbage and Diet Coke.
People say, “Are you full?”
I have to say, “I’m so full.”
Which brings me to the eighth reason I never wanted to have a kid:
I never looked at my dad when I was growing up and thought, I want to do that.
My dad always seemed so angry. My whole life I figured maybe it was because of me or my siblings or my mom. When I got older it started to occur to me that some people are just filled with existential dread, and maybe I’m one of those people too.
Maybe I shouldn’t pass that on to the next generation.
I fall asleep and I have the best sleep I’ve had in a year because I’ve accidentally locked Mazzy out of the bedroom. In the morning I open the door and smell the most heinous stench because Mazzy has peed all over the couch.
COUTZ
I’m standing in the living room across from the pee-soaked couch.
The couch is irrecoverable. I don’t even think dousing it in YMCA pool water would help. I don’t know what to do.
What if your cat pees on a couch? Order a pizza.
I order the pizza to distract me from my feelings but also to compete with the smell.
When the delivery guy shows up, I give him twenty dollars to help me carry the couch out to the street and that’s where it dies.
After I discard the couch I quarantine myself in my dungeon for four days and on the fifth day I wake up at 4:30 a.m. and I wander into the kitchen and I do the dishes. And I’m phenomenal at it. I really enjoy it. That week Jen starts writing poems for Oona for when she gets older and I find this:
The Dishes
Dear Oona, in our house there is always a congregation of ants summiting around a noodle or carrying their weight in popcorn across the kitchen floor. And in the sink there is always a pile of dishes. But this morning your father did the dishes. And it made me want to fuck him.
I’d like to think that poem is for me.
A few hours later we take Oona to a department store and she spots this couch. It’s blue. Jen thinks it’s green. We look it up: lagoon. Oona loves the couch.
She says, “Coutz!” (couch)
“Pi-whoa!” (pillow)
“Wug!” (rug)
She’s a genius.
The three of us sit on this coutz in the depawtment stowa and Oona hides behind each of us and we say, “Where’s Oona? Where’s Oona?!”
This is a game we’ve recently started playing where the premise is where the hell is our daughter? and the conclusion is always there she is.
For whatever reason, on this particular day we are committing to this game harder than ever.
We say, “Where’s Oona?!”
And Oona clings to my back as I spin.
The harder she clings the more I commit.
“WHERE IS OONA?!”
I spin and she clings. I spin and she clings. And then she starts laughing so hard.
Just so hard.
It’s the hardest I’ve ever seen anyone laugh in my whole life and I’m in the jokes business. At this idea that she’s tricking us. The people in power. The people who know everything. She’s fooled us completely at least this once. She’s laughing so hard that I start laughing in a new way. From my perspective and Jen’s perspective and Oona’s perspective all at once.
We’re laughing as one.
And, in this moment, I feel full. I’m seeing the world—through baby’s eyes.
OONADAD
//
OONADAD
I write WALL on the wall.
I write BATHROOM on the bathroom door and CAT on the wall above the litterbin. I write MIRROR on the mirror so MIRROR appears across our faces.
My three-year-old daughter Oona cackles maniacally. Her joy of letters and language has started a compulsion in the house where we write everything on our walls and doors and windows.
I write MOM and DAD on the bedroom door and she draws a picture underneath—That’s you on your wedding day. She draws a picture of herself on her bedroom door and writes her own name. On all the rest of the doors in the house I write DOOR. Except the hallway closet where she insists on writing a double backwards HI. So: IH IH.
I write EARTH and STAR on the wall. On the refrigerator I write FOOD. BOOK on bookcase. BED on bed. SINK on sink. TUB on tub. On the wall near the toilet my daughter writes HI.
She draws a big rainbow on the hallway wall and I write RAINBOW. She traces the letters with her fingers. She draws a sun on the wall and I write SUN. On the stairs I write STEP.
>
If you draw a tree on the window I’ll write TREE, I tell her. And we do. If you draw a hippo I’ll write HIPPO and we do. She draws a mean caterpillar mommy and a mean caterpillar baby on the wall and I write MEAN CATERPILLAR MOMMY and MEAN CATERPILLAR BABY. She draws a picture of our family and says that’s you in the lipstick.
I have read some poetry in my life, but the most beautiful sentence I have ever seen in the English language is written by my three-year-old daughter, Oona—in bright pink chalk on the sidewalk in front of my house—
//
OONADAD
OONA and DAD are one word, she explains, because OONA and DAD love you-ch’other. And the two little lines above it? as to offer accent or emphasis? It means they love-you-cho’ther.
THE BOOK ENDS HERE
Things have changed in our family. It happened over time. It wasn’t a single moment but a series of moments that formed an evolution. Which brings us back to our story in Nantucket.
When Oona was fourteen months old we were in Nantucket for a film festival and when the festival director asked if I’d tell a story on a storytelling night with the theme of “jealousy,” Jen suggested I tell a story about Oona.
“You’re jealous of Oona,” she said.
After we check into the hotel, I open up my notebook and read her a passage I had written in private.
I said, “It’s almost like I didn’t know what nothing was until I became a dad and then I thought—Oh, that’s what nothing is.”
She laughed. She said, “You should say that onstage.”
We were renewing our vows.
She showed me the poem that starts with “Dear Oona” about her night alone in the hospital after Oona was born. The one that ends: “she cries out, you stand, you sway you sing you feed, no matter your fresh stitches, she stops crying when you hold her, holy shit the pain, you do not let her go until morning, you wait it happens in a moment.”
Some of it made me feel terrible. But I respected the honesty. And I loved the writing. Embir Bones approved.
Jen and I began sharing writing we’d done in secret over the past two years. The collaboration we didn’t even know was happening.
It was often tense.
One time I showed her a draft of something I had written, and she woke me up at four in the morning and said, “If this is how you feel, then I don’t even know why we’re married.”
At a certain point it became clear that this naive idea that we had attempted—that “this baby wouldn’t change the way we live our lives”—was a lie.
We had lied to ourselves.
But not with malicious intent.
I was lying to be with the love of my life and the love of my life was lying to be with the love of our lives, whom we hadn’t yet met. We were both lying to ourselves, and what resulted was a family.
That said, I will not lie about how much of a struggle it was for me to become a decent dad. But if I’m going to publish all of these raw feelings about that struggle, I think it would feel incomplete if I didn’t also write this:
Dear Oona,
Congratulations.
You’re four years old.
You probably won’t remember this but we had a birthday party for you. The theme was “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in space on the moon with chocolate Elsa.”
I’m pretty sure you picked it.
We had a birthday party for you at two, three, and four, and we’re pretty much committed to having birthday parties for you until the end of time, so you can count on it. I want you to know that I got better at being a dad. I do a lot more dishes. I’m in charge of grocery shopping. I play you guitar and we sing songs and dance. Sometimes you get in the hole in my sheet and you say, “I’m wike Daddy!” It’s the best.
Sometimes when I tell people these stories onstage they say, “What will Oona think when she grows up and hears this?” And I think my answer usually surprises them.
Oona, what I want you to know is that your mom and I love you and we want you to be honest with the people closest to you. Your friends, your parents, your wife, your husband, your girlfriend, your boyfriend—anyone you feel close to. I hope that you’re comfortable telling them how you feel. It’s not easy to do. Because the truth is often uncomfortable. The way you really feel about things can seem unpleasant. But in my forty years of experience, I have found that it’s the best chance you have to truly connect with other people.
Because all we have is each other.
I’m doing a little better with my health. I’ve taken time off. I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’ve dropped twenty-five pounds but my belly still makes a great drum. My doctor took my blood this week and informed me that I’m no longer diabetic. I asked him what he thinks made the difference and he said, “You chose to live.”
When I was writing this book, your mother was working on her own book called Little Astronaut—a collection of poems. She let her family know for the first time that she is a poet. And her poems are here in this book for anyone to see. I asked her why she is no longer writing in secret and she said, “I’ve been so busy since Oona was born I forgot to be secret.”
One of her poems changed over the course of your first thirteen months.
little astronaut
a newborn rests her head on the earth of
everything else is outer space.
When I asked your mother why she added the word “father,” she said, “I didn’t. You did.”
I will always try to do better as your dad. I will not always succeed. I will try and try and try. I will try to help you understand this strange and beautiful outer space.
Love,
Oonadad
Acknowledgments
Jen and I not only needed the eyes and ears and brains and hearts of people we respect but also of people we trust and love and to whom we felt comfortable divulging our deepest and darkest secrets.
The people who worked with us in the early stages of the book and The New One play are Seth Barrish, Joe Birbiglia, and Ira Glass.
When the book started to take form we expanded our circle of trust to include people who were willing to grant the ultimate favor: to read a rough draft of a whole damn book that isn’t finished and has a lot of mistakes.
Speed Dial: Liz Allen, Rena Mosteirin, Peter Salomone, Mabel Lewis, Greg Dorris, Jonny Levin.
1st Draft Club: Chenjerai Kumanyika, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Rob Meyer, Martha Parker, Adam Leon, Josh Hamilton, James Harmon, Lee Brock, Hannah Solow, Sarah MacEachern, Josh Rabinowitz, Tami Sagher.
Wind Beneath Our Wings: Victoria Labalme, Lewis Black, Adam Gopnik, Derek DelGaudio, Chris Wink, Alan Zwiebel.
Comic Flourishes: Jacqueline Novak, Chris Laker, John Mulaney, Jimmy Carr, Judd Apatow, Pete Holmes.
Poetic Touch: Maria Garcia Teutsch, Ilya Kaminsky.
The Look: Wendy MacNaughton and Crystal English Sacca, who designed the cover.
The Feel: This book would not be possible without the vision of our editor Gretchen Young.
Smart Friends: Greer Baxter, Mark Flanagan, Dan Wetmore, Kateryna Rakowsky, Chris Sacca, Shelly Slocum, Katherine Brinson.
Consigliere: Mike Berkowitz.
Big Shots: Erin Malone, John Buzzetti and our friends at WME, as well as Kevin McCollum and Lucas McMahon and the whole team that produced the play. Also, our lawyer Isaac Dunham.
Making Books: The entire team at Grand Central Publishing and Hachette including: Ben Sevier, Jimmy Franco, Brian McLendon, Albert Tang, Haley Weaver, and Kristen Lemire. We couldn’t feel luckier.
Our deepest gratitude to our parents who raised us when we were the new ones.
And to our daughter, Oona, who is the most joy.
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