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Rose

Dear Diary,

Ha. Dear Diary. Look at me, acting like an eleven-year-old schoolgirl.

I didn’t even keep a diary when I was an eleven-year-old schoolgirl.

It never occurred to me to keep a diary until just now, at age twenty-eight.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I think motherhood is the necessity of invention. My thoughts have to go somewhere.

Nicole is sleeping. Her daily nap is the only time I have to myself.

A year ago, she would sleep two or three hours at a stretch.

Now it’s just forty-five minutes or so. By the time she turns four, she may not nap at all.

What then? She’s already started refusing naps some days.

When she does sleep, like today, I can’t fully relax or engage in anything because I’m never sure when she’ll wake up.

If my attention is a flock of seagulls, half the flock is busy waiting for her to cry.

I keep telling them, “Silly birds, come back to me. Let us focus on something together that has nothing to do with her,” but they don’t listen.

I told Rob that we need to hire a babysitter soon, someone who can look after her a couple of hours a day.

He said, “I know, sweetheart. We will. Money is just tight until the practice is up and running.” His beloved dental practice, his lifelong dream, coming to fruition.

Has he forgotten that I have dreams too?

Maybe this diary is to help me get reacquainted with my dreams. I will write in it when I need a break from working on my dissertation.

Well, that’s what I’m calling it. I’m fooling myself, playing pretend just like Baby and her dolls.

I am not in a doctoral program and likely never will be.

I was supposed to be. That was my dream—to get my PhD in history, to be a professor at a university—an Ivy, my secret aspiration.

I had always assumed my life would be one of acquiring, discussing, and sharing knowledge with brilliant peers and eager students.

Alas, I have tripped and fallen into this conventional life, and I spend all my time with a toddler.

If I’d kept a diary when I’d met Rob, I would have written things like:

He loves my brain.

He supports my studies.

He is truly progressive.

He is my ideal man.

Sigh.

The pregnancy wasn’t expected. My inclination was to end it, to realize my power in this post– Roe v.

Wade era. Rob seemed truly sad when I mentioned my intention.

He can be so sentimental. “Maybe it’s meant to be,” he’d said.

“We’d be great parents,” he’d said. Parents.

I remember when he said that word and I felt decades older, instantly.

He made it sound so romantic, though. I started having second thoughts, started wondering if maybe I should keep the baby.

Rob loved me, unambiguously. I loved him, more than I had any other man before him.

I’d never really thought about motherhood, except that I’d assumed (like most women) it would happen at some point, but after I settled into a career, after I lived a little more.

“I always thought you liked surprises.” He’d said that too.

While I was still debating what to do, he proposed, placing a diamond upon that all-important finger.

I’d never smiled so big in my life. It was the strangest thing.

I kept covering my mouth, out of embarrassment or shame.

I knew, logically, that this glee was a product of social conditioning.

Society has taught all of us women to want the ring, to crave the title of wife , to passively wait until some man declares us worthy.

I knew, logically, that this was all nonsense.

And still I said yes. And I wore a white dress on our wedding day, to boot!

I don’t always know who I am anymore.

At least I didn’t take Rob’s last name. Seemingly, I am still capable of some selfhood.

Thank god. None of my friends understood.

Mother certainly didn’t. “I like my name,” I said.

“I don’t understand why we have to give up things to get married.

” Men don’t take their wives’ names because that would be emasculating.

It would represent his identity being folded into his wife’s, a partial obliteration of his self, a loss of power.

For women, this loss is not problematic.

It is normal. Obliteration of self is just “how things are.”

Rob was fine with me keeping my name. “It’s yours,” he said. “Who am I to take it from you?” If he’d shown any doubt, I would have called the whole thing off. I would have ended the pregnancy. But he said the exact right thing.

Nicole has his last name, which seemed completely appropriate at the time we were filling out the birth certificate.

It was the day after she made her grand entrance, and I was awash in oxytocin, in love not only with her but also with my vision of Rob and me sharing the responsibility for this beautiful human we’d created.

I pictured a truly equitable arrangement.

I was so naive.

In her book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution , Adrienne Rich pointed out that mothering is a verb, implying an ongoing relationship with unending care for children. Not surprisingly, fathering is not a verb in our social lexicon.

Fact: Men are among the 3 to 5 percent of male mammals who contribute anything at all to their children postinsemination.

So I guess I should be grateful. I may be starving for a baguette, but at least I have these crumbs.

To be fair, Rob does more than most fathers.

I hear other mothers talk about their husbands who have never touched a diaper.

Rob changes diapers, when he’s home. He’s just not home much.

Because of the practice . But he adores Nicole, calls her Nikki Bear, grits his teeth when he just looks at her, as if he is restraining himself from acting upon his playful threat to eat her up.

I watch the muscles of his jaws clench when he does this and think he might adore her more than I do.

His enthusiasm for her is boundless and so seemingly natural.

Then again, he doesn’t have to spend every hour of the day with her.

If I had some time to myself, to my work, I would have more enthusiasm too.

A few weeks ago, I told Rob that mothering is hard for me.

He said, “You make it look so easy, though. You are a wonderful mother!” Then he kissed me.

He is a sweet man. I am just not a sweet wife.

In any case, despite her father’s adoration of her, Nicole should have my last name. Fournier. So beautiful, so French, so much more “me” than Larson. She grew inside me, and now, even with her outside me, we are still so attached. Anyone peering into our lives would say that she is my everything.

I think of my identity, my personhood, as a giant pie. Before Nicole, there were so many slices—reader, researcher, lover, swimmer, dancer, friend-haver. Now the pie is mostly her, with a tiny sliver left of me.

This diary is dedicated to the tiny sliver.

Nicole’s calling for me. Must go for now.