I now spend hours using only one hand, juggling the baby while I cook, clean, shop, text, write. It has become a design and organizational challenge to make the entire home one-handed accessible. Mad respect to all the one-handed (and no-handed) folks out there. And to all those working single moms and dads who do all this with a bone-deep tired that must be way beyond mine—wow.
Late at night, I have the opportunity to move as a sightless person, in near-total darkness, striving for an economy of movement to avoid the devastating error of sound waking baby. It is an elaborate house-wide Japanese tea ceremony: no clinking, all presence, full savoring of all the simple movements and flavors of now. I’ve set up the bedroom for these moments: my clothes just so, to locate and put on blindly. This all feels like good practice, regardless of fatherhood: take care of our space, our objects, and give each thing it’s easily accessed honored space. It’s stewarding a place that is conducive to care, whether that care is for a baby or just simple care for this environment and ourselves.
Late at night, I have the opportunity to move as a sightless person, in near-total darkness, striving for an economy of movement to avoid the devastating error of sound waking baby. It is an elaborate house-wide Japanese tea ceremony: no clinking, all presence, full savoring of all the simple movements and flavors of now. I’ve set up the bedroom for these moments: my clothes just so, to locate and put on blindly. This all feels like good practice, regardless of fatherhood: take care of our space, our objects, and give each thing it’s easily accessed honored space. It’s stewarding a place that is conducive to care, whether that care is for a baby or just simple care for this environment and ourselves.
Care itself has taken on new dimensions: to hold my baby at night, to carry the most valuable thing in my world through the darkness, demands absolute presence of mind and body.
