The other moms were impressed when Melissa told them I said that. They thought I got it.
But I didn’t get it.
I didn’t get it when Melissa cried about going back to work three days a week. I didn’t get it when she wanted to drive around Cherry Hill looking for my Mom and Juliet when they were only 15 minutes late coming home from a walk. And I didn’t get it when I wasn’t allowed to say the real number of minutes before she started to panic.
Being a mom is different than being a dad. It’s harder.
The other night, I got a glimpse. Melissa was out. Juliet was crying, refusing to eat. When Melissa fed her, Juliet grabbed the spoon and plunged it into her mouth. Fist deep. With her other hand, she shoveled back the overflow of oatmeal lava running down her chin. She licked her lips and the bowl and Melissa’s nose. That’s how she gives kisses. For me, she cried.
I tried the bath. She laughs the best there. She likes when you use the rubber duckie to spray water in her eyes. She likes eating the bath book, or the washcloth. That night, she didn’t like anything. She didn’t like me. She only liked crying.
She stopped when the power went out.
Silence. Darkness. And the fear that it was only me and Juliet. No mommy to save us. Not even electricity to give us a fighting chance of surviving until she came home. My first thought was that disaster was imminent. My second thought was that my first one should have been to pull my daughter out of the tub.
I held her against me, my t shirt getting as wet as Juliet. We dripped quietly in the dark. Juliet giggled.
I worked my way through Juliet’s room using with my big toe like a blind-guy cane. With my free hand, I gathered her towel, pajamas, diaper and wipes. I felt around for the tube of butt cream and picked it up with my mouth.
I laid the whole mess on the living room floor carpet. I changed Juliet in the light from the moon, stars and Ben Franklin Bridge. She was quiet as I fumbled with the tiny buttons on her pajamas. She got it. She empathized.
Juliet was clean, dressed for bed. Happy. Melissa was going to be impressed with this. I hadn't even called her. Juliet sensed my confidence growing, and resumed the fit she had been having before we went unvoluntarily of the grid. I bounced her and rubbed her back. Her tears dribbled onto my cheek.
Several thoughts too late, again, I realized she was hungry. The formula was in the kitchen. The kitchen was in the dark.
I calculated each step to the kitchen, sliding more than stepping. I felt the toaster on the counter, I thought. I felt around for the formula. Juliet wailed. It was hopeless.
I reached high in a cabinet where we had stashed the Shabbat candlesticks that my Mom had bought us when we moved into the apartment. They were on the top shelf, pushed to the back, next to a box of candles and long matches. The whole shebang. I lit the candles.
It was enough light to read the directions on the formula, and to measure it out. Juliet stopped crying when she saw the bottle shaking. She panted and reached for it with both hands.
On the couch, with the lights from outside to my right and the candles to my left, I could see Juliet’s mouth open wide before the nipple was even close to it. She ate angrily. But by the time Juliet had almost finished her bottle, her brow had unfurrowed. Her eyelids had drooped, and her hand had fallen off the bottle and dangled over my elbow.
I carefully carried the candles and Juliet to her room. Juliet didn’t flinch when I laid her in her crib. The candlelights danced in the dark. I exhaled for the first time in hours.
The power returned a coupe of minutes later. I looked at the microwave clock. It had been only twenty minutes. All of them had been as petrifying as the first one. The one where I realized that my baby was in a tub in the dark, and I hadn't done anything about it yet.
Maybe I had experienced twenty minutes of being a mom. Twenty minutes of feeling like every decision was critical. Twenty minutes of wishing I could know, for a second, that everything was fine.
Twenty minutes of finally understanding why Melissa could barely wait fifteen before sounding the alarms and sending out the search party.
And still not really getting it.
