Again? How was I going to do this again?
When my first wife died after nearly three years of fighting cancer, I became a single father. I was bereft to the bone, financially on fumes and became solely responsible for a little girl, Lily, just days before her third birthday. Obviously, this was a brutal situation, but over the next two years, Lily and I — with support from family, friends and therapists — found ways to help and inspire each other; we made our little family cohere — sometimes spectacularly so — in a tiny but rent-stabilized one-bedroom in Manhattan.
When Lily was five years old, miracle of miracles, love’s mallet thumped me again. A quickie marriage in Vegas preceded our move into a fancy part of Brooklyn. My new and younger wife was determined to have a baby. Lily was desperate for a mother and thrilled by the prospect of becoming a sister. And, lo, here was my chance to experience a more traditional kind of fatherhood.
But four years later, my second wife left me. I became a single father once again, with no more financial resources than I’d had before, even more sense of loss and two little girls this time.
One experience of rebuilding my life had been more than enough for me. Now, on the cusp of turning 50, I found myself a sad cliché, searching for one of those depressing starter apartments that dumped middle-aged dads end up in, while raising the now 9-year-old Lily by myself and — especially on those nights when I got my co-parenting turn — caring for my one-year-old daughter, Ione, too.
However destroyed I felt, I also understood that time was passing. I firmly grasped the importance of being a quality parent for the baby, providing a strong connection with her. I’d only have her two nights a week, and non-consecutive nights at that, but surely I had enough experience raising a little girl to be able to not only handle fathering but to wow during these mediation-agreed-upon times together. Plus, we had my sidekick, Lily, riding shotgun.
True, Lily had to process a second maternal figure’s thorough departure; nonetheless she would have that oft-requested chance to be a big sister. And the little one would grow up relying on her dad and valuing her sister. This is what I wanted, what I anticipated.
In the dark stretches before dawn, when I could keep my thoughts from tail-spinning into an alternate universe where I was not doing this Han Solo, I thought up plans for me and the girls, schemes about how to organize our hours. I’m not a taskmaster, don’t believe in charts and am too lax about cleaning to force my kids into chores, so my ideas weren’t draconian. Still there had to be ways to make simple responsibilities fun and to create meal and bedtime rituals, sprinkling them with stardust.
We don’t want to be litterbugs. We want to be glitterbugs.
Adding a letter, great plan. Still, I’d managed to transform my life with Lily into something special, and even occasionally marvelous. I was determined to perform the same magic trick with two kids.
Thus, the rebuild commenceth. True, the walk-up I found for us was above a 99 cent shop and alongside an industrial boulevard. Eighteen wheelers rumbled past at all hours, and masses of unhoused people camped down the street. But the space had lots of light, a cavernous living room, a ton of cabinet space in the kitchen area and full bedrooms at opposite ends — the kind of setup ideal for adventurous art students.
For a dad thinking about his littler one (we’d be just two subway stops from Ione’s other neighborhood) and his nine-year-old (20 minutes by bus to the charter school where she would soon start sixth grade) and his own sanity (a lot of space meant we would not be on top of each other with no escape), there were pragmatic appeals. And across the street, a huge, 24-four hour grocery was fashioned like an open air bazaar, strung with colored lights and overflowing with crates of exotic vegetables and bright fruits.
Lily picked the larger bedroom to be the sisters’ room. It overlooked the boulevard, and the ovals from the nines on the store’s marquee peeked up into the window space near her bed. In the hollow plastic of the arcing signage, we found bird nests made of twigs and shredded takeout menus, Cheetos bags, zigzag boxes and bird bones. Odd and slummy, sure, but also kinda badass. Lily pinned above her bed cast posters from her afterschool theater programs. On the far end of that room, I set up for Ione the crib of white slats I’d got from Craigslist. I covered its mattress with a clean, form-fitting sheet. In went a pile of stuffed animals, including the giant Minnie Mouse with Ione’s name embroidered on its foot, a gift that Lily had paid for with her allowance.
I pushed the wire basket full of our dirty clothes over the cracked and uneven sidewalk, Lily pushed Ione in her stroller right behind me, our rickety parade headed to the laundromat. By the entrance they had one of those ancient arcade games where you put in a quarter and tried to push money over a ledge. We pumped in change and rooted for jackpots that never came, bringing stares from people waiting for their laundry to dry. When a few coins plunked down Lily shrieked, Ione stared, surprised, and then raised her arms and cheered as well.
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I schlepped them to the local Carvel for single scoops and sprinkles. I set them on the mechanical horse outside the barber shop, pumped in quarters. Sometimes the horse actually vibrated. We ventured to different Bangladeshi bakeries for Rossi, until the girls decided they’d rather have penny candy. I microwaved them popcorn for Disney videos, blew money I could not afford on pizzas that no one finished. I sang to them, altering the lyrics to eighties hip hop group Whodini’s classic, “The Freaks Come Out at Night,” repeating it so much that both my daughters started chanting along, when fishies get together, to go out at night, they like to wear leather jackets, chains and spikes.
Around my plans to make it happen, love and happiness sometimes sprang up spontaneously. Here is Ione, dark haired curls, pale skin, petal lips, her eyes asking a question, flashing glee at the answer. Here she is bouncing on Lily’s bed. Here they are with helium balloons and stuffed animals from the 99-nine cent store. Lily snuggles with Ione, reads from Library Lion, Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth and A Visitor for Bear, some of the same books that I read to her when she was that age.
And Lily was game up to a point: she wanted to be involved with her sister right up until she didn’t; then she needed to be by herself right up until she wandered back to be part of our group. Conversely, I had to keep Ione entertained and fed, while making sure I gave Lily the love and landing place she needed.
Nearing bedtime. Ione in her onesie jammies. Lights dimmed, special kaleidoscope lantern that blasts colors and shapes transforming their bedroom walls and ceiling. I started singing lyrics to a Sesame Street song, Feist’s rendition, beloved by parents and children alike: one two three four, monsters walking ‘cross the floor.
Ione clapped, started marching
But something in Lily’s face — was she thinking that song was something proprietary? I’d sung it to her countless times in bed, the two of us delighting over chickens just back from the shore. Was she jealous of the attention Ione was receiving? Was she being possessive of me?
“I need to do my homework,” she said.
Ione’s face froze. “Lily?”
“I can’t,” Lily said.
You could see the little sister not understanding, adoring her big sister so much, melting down. Full tantrum mode.
Then one morning, I was going to take Ione back to her neighborhood, and I turned to lock the front door and grab the stroller and Ione, who was halfway down the stairs, tumbled down the last four, causing bruises on her face.
And then one night she successfully climbed out of her crib and fell three feet to the floor and bawled.
One afternoon Lily was in a bad mood and pushed past Ione and accidentally knocked her into a door.
Throughout, the little one’s plea — sometimes thrilled, sometimes dissatisfied, but repetitive, echoing, familiar ‘Lily. Lily. LILY.”
Before the separation, towards the end of my older daughter’s fifth grade year, about five minutes before she was to leave for school one morning, she followed a chaotic impulse and cut off the bangs in front of her forehead and temples. The result was as bad as you imagine. Getting her to class that day seemed a miracle on par with loaves and fishes.
After school, we had an emergency appointment at the neighborhood shop that specialized in kid’s haircuts. The stylist and I had arrived upon a kind of answer, convinced Lily to try a bowl-ish, bang-less version of actress Audrey Tatou’s cut from the 2001 indie hit, Amelie. Lily, seeing the results, had thrown a world-class tantrum, wanting to quit school, threatening to never go outside again, you name it.
That crisis abated, but after the separation from my second wife, the fact remained, even under the best of circumstances, much of Lily’s life was in flux — a new neighborhood, starting in a new school shortly, a dramatically changed family structure. Was it possible for this child without a mother to not be threatened by her little sister who had one? Was it possible for my younger child to do anything but covet the approval, even adoration, of her charismatic big sister?
Our path was to follow plans that worked until they stopped working. Then I either pushed through the anomaly, or made adjustments, or gave the f— up and tried something else or I just carried on. I kept pushing the little one on swings, spending so much time pushing her on swings at the local playground that I taught myself to sing the alphabet backwards to her, just to have something for my mind to do.
Meanwhile amid all those broken plans and dead time, sometimes, some glitter, a sparkling.
Lily is a teenager now, Ione a big girl of six. My latest genius move has been to get the girls a little blonde Shi Tzu puppy. They named him Buster. Of course Buster turns out to have been abused, and bonds deeply with me, but barks and flees whenever Lily comes home, and hides whenever Ione tries to pet him.
It’s seemed to me that any plan, strategy, preconceived notion, cheat codes or what have you, has been bound to fail, often miserably. But. But. But. The attempt is all. It’s the only real chance we’ve got. Through presence, engagement and the acceptance that is inherent to love, a family has emerged.
At the end of some nights, when it is late and the lights are out and they are supposed to be asleep, as I head out to walk the dog and pass by their closed bedroom door, I get to hear, however faint, the best music in this world: two sisters whispering, laughing.
I Will Do Better: A Father’s Memoir of Heartbreak, Parenting, and Love by Charles Bock is available now, wherever books are sold.
