This afternoon my wife and I were driving home and strategizing about how to get our baby to sleep tonight. I was talking through a half-dozen steps—from changing to rocking to feeding to lying down and easing/oozing away from her once she’s deep enough asleep—and she said, this is mothering: planning out the details of how exactly to care for a child. I was struck by this thought, and wondered silently why this would not be fathering. She continued, answering my unspoken question: it is generally considered mother work to put the baby to sleep. “To mother” in English is to nurture, to care-take, to raise, to love; “to father” is merely to inseminate. I feel a flash of pride at the idea that I have spent some time mothering (I have always felt sadness that I will never be able to become pregnant and give birth). At the same time, I feel a vital urgency to redefine what it is to father, to broaden that definition to include nurturing, loving, serving through all the minutiae of caring for a child.
This evening I hopped on my bike and cruised through the town for the first time in a while. My god, how exhilarating! I sure can move—especially when all I am moving is myself. What a capable individual I am! I have moved my body all around the world. And yet, I am less impressed by my recent world travel than I am by my baby beginning to hoist herself from sitting to standing. And really, what’s the value of being capable, of having strength, if it is only to move oneself? I am learning to redefine strength, beyond what I have absorbed from our culture’s individualistic ego-based masculinity. And I revel in these moments, grateful for the power and freedom of traveling solo.
