More adventures of identity

It's been a busy month.

A few weeks ago I was feeling a little lonesome and bored, so my friend/former roommate decided to come pick me up and take me back to Massachusetts. We lived together for a year and worked together for three years before Téa was born, so going back up with her was sort of a blast from the past. I hadn't been to Mass since November.

It was great seeing all the kids and parents again. It sort of felt like I had never left. But last time I was there I had a tiny sleeping newborn, and this time I had a smiling, wriggly little chub-a-lub. She crawled around on the floor and hammed it up for some of the parents. I'm so proud of her.

A lot of memories welled to the surface, both good and bad ones. A bit of college nostalgia. I'll have to dedicate a future entry to that topic.

Honestly I've had this half-written entry open in a tab on my browser for many days now, but I've been hemming and hawing about what to write about, exactly. My trip to Massachusetts was very significant for me, but it was a bit overshadowed by Big Job Happenings.


Last Saturday I started the training for a job I'm applying for. To recap: I've had to do a phone interview, an in-person interview, and two very long standardized tests to make it this far. After the training (which is three more Saturdays with a whole lot of homework in between), I'll have to pass yet another test to know if I get hired.

I've decided not to name the company I'm applying to, by the way; most of my friends and family know what it is already, and if you want to know, ask. But I'm not sure that it's quite appropriate to make it public, especially since I'm not yet hired. In short, it's a tutoring job for a very well-known company.

I was very nervous but excited about the training. Nervous because of my fear of the unknown (meeting new people in a new environment, and having to introduce myself to them-- eek!), and excited because I was SO ready to get out and do something challenging and intellectually stimulating again. I once again left the baby in Anthony's capable hands and took the train to Manhattan.

I was the first to arrive (score!), and chatted with the trainer a bit. He was younger than I expected, and very nice, which was reassuring. I felt confident. There were only three other people in the training, which was also reassuring; I function much better in small groups. The training, and the job, seem like they'll be challenging, but doable. I just can't express how proud I am to be finally working toward a job that I can be proud of, that brings in a considerable amount of bank, and that I think I can be good at. I've been working on the training homework every day, since there's so little time in the day to spare for it (I have to wait till Téa's napping or in bed for the night, so I'm not interrupted by her every 2 minutes). I'm so excited!

An oddly refreshing detail of the training: I didn't mention Téa the entire time. I mentioned Anthony, but nothing about being a mother. No one there knows that I am a mother, which is weird, but also sort of nice in a way. I can just be myself for once, instead of Téa's mom, a half of a dyad. I'm sure I'll mention her at some point just in small talk, but for now I'm enjoying this thing that I used to take for granted, but that now I rather miss: Living my OWN life, as an individual.

A mini-rant and adventures in mom-identity

I was going to write an entry complaining about the peripheral men in my life, but I'm not sure it would do any good for anybody. Let it just be known that the following annoy me:

1. Men (both former love interests and not) who claimed to want to be my friends, and were in fact good friends of mine, until I got pregnant. There are so-called "friends" that I literally have not heard from since they found out I was having a baby, over a year ago. And others I hear from on occasion but who really haven't talked to me much since then.
   
2. There are a few older married men whom I idly talk to online (I frequent yahoo chat, for some stupid reason). These are men in their 40s who have become bored with their wives and think that even though they are fat and bald, young women like me are going to be inexplicably drawn to them and flirt with them. Here's a hint: No. Even before I was happily married, I was never interested in older men.
   
3. Men (again, from yahoo chat, sometimes they also fall into category 2) who try to tell me that I married/had a baby too young and my marriage is going to fail, and/or my life will no longer be fulfilling. I don't even feel the need to justify my decisions here.
   

Okay, that kind of ended up being a rant regardless, but trust me, it was only a fraction of the rant I gave Anthony the other night. I should clarify that I was ranting to him about other people; he's exempt from my "men suck" rants.

Anyway, I wanted to write about my Sunday, which was a novel experience for me. I had to go to Manhattan to take a test for the job I may-or-may-not have. The test was about 4 hours long, so I was obligated to leave the baby with Anthony for longer than I ever have before. He went to Manhattan with me to find the place, and I had time to get some last-minute coffee and feed the baby before I went to the test center. The test started around 10. At noon I had a break, called home, baby was sleeping and all was well. I left the place around quarter to 2, and purposefully did not call home before hopping on the train. If the baby was upset, I didn't want to know. I called when I got off the train, a few blocks from home, and Anthony was noticably less chipper than when I called the first time. Téa had cried herself to sleep, after eating a decent amount of cereal. Not a huge deal; she cries when I'm home as well. When I got home, she woke up, looked at me, and calmly (not ravenously, as I expected) ate when I offered her the boob. She wasn't traumatized and she didn't starve. All in all it went quite well.

What struck me most about the whole experience was how surreal it was to be out and about without the baby. While interacting with and looking at the people around me, I kept thinking: "No one here knows I'm a mom." My motherhood has become such a part of my identity, I almost didn't know what to do with myself without it. I felt vulnerable, but free at the same time. I kept being afraid that someone would hit on me. This wasn't just me being conceited; before I got pregnant (and even while I was pregnant, oddly enough), I got hit on a lot. Of course, with a squirmy baby strapped to me, men pretty much avoid me. But without her there, I felt unprotected-- to a stranger, I was just a young, single woman alone in the city. Fortunately I kept my head down enough so that no one talked to me.

The freedom felt nice. I felt so light, figuratively and literally: It's much easier to get around without 15lbs of baby and however much of her stuff I've got to carry. I kept feeling like I was leaving something behind, and looked back at my train seat as I got up at my stop: "What am I forgetting? Oh right, I don't have Téa with me. I just brought my purse."

Yesterday Anthony worked from home, and I left the baby with him while I went to do laundry. I couldn't believe how much easier that was without the baby! Just walking there and back with the bags of laundry in my cart was easier. I could freely move laundry in and out of the machines without the obstacle of the baby strapped to my chest. It went so much faster and I didn't feel like my arms were going to fall off when I got home. I think I need to do laundry sans-Téa from now on (until she can walk, I guess).

Lastly, I just got my test results back. I gotta retake part of it. Didn't do too shabbily though, for my circumstances. I couldn't study for it until it was almost too late, and got VERY little sleep the night before. Guess who's to blame for both those things? Hint: she's teething and I'm about to change her dirty little butt.

Books: My anti-drug.

I feel this blog may become more book-oriented than Lacan-oriented, because I'm a total bibliophile lately, but I think I'm okay with that.

I just finished Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which gave me more nightmares than any book I've read to date. I dreamed about being in the dark hold of the ship, scared and sick. That part of the book horrified me the most. I knew that Kunta Kinte was going to be kidnapped, but the first 150 pages detailing his life in Africa sort of lulled me into a false sense of security. Then out of nowhere he gets beaten and chained and taken to America, never to see his family again.

I'm sure anything I could say about Roots has been said before, but nevertheless, I have now read it. It didn't tell me anything I hadn't learned before in history classes, but it definitely made it more real.

I wanted to get into some Dickens, whom I've never read before, but after Roots I can't bring myself to read white literature right away. So I decided to read Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, which is a novel written by a 16 year old Haitian girl. It caught my eye at Barnes and Noble, for two reasons. One, because it was in the Oprah's Book Club section, which I'm not ashamed to admit liking. Oprah chooses good books, damn it. I read many of them before they were picked by her (The Good Earth, East of Eden, Anna Karenina, to name a few), and consider most of her picks to be really worthwhile works of literature. I gotta respect anyone who can get Midwestern housewives to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison.

Anyway, the second reason it caught my eye was because it was about Haiti. I've been following this blog about a rescue center in Haiti, which takes in babies and children who are sick, malnourished or injured, and provides care until they are well enough to go home. The pictures of children with kwashiorkor are particularly disturbing, with their swollen faces and legs and empty eyes. It stuns me to see toddlers much older than Téa that weigh far less. If I had money to donate to the rescue center, I would.

Despite having only barely started reading the new book, I had a dream about it (sort of) last night. I dreamed I was in, not Haiti, but Jamaica, and I was being given a tour of this wealthy white person's apartment, which was on the top floor of a really rickety old building, the bottom floors of which were occupied by native Jamaicans. The wealthy apartment was really beautiful, but the building had such a bad foundation that it wasn't level; the whole building listed to one side. I was thinking that it was a great apartment, but I'd be afraid to live in it; the building seemed like it was just about to topple over.

I'm sure that means something, but I haven't felt like interpreting dreams lately.

I should really write more often. It's difficult to find that time when three things miraculously align: I feel like writing, I have something to write about, and I have time to do it. I'd blame the baby, but who am I kidding? It's always been like this! I guess I'd rather have the missing factor be "time to do it" rather than "something to write about." So often in college I'd feel like writing for myself and have all the free time in the world, but my mind was a blank.

What dreams may instill

So I guess a new post is in order, to keep people from freaking out about me. My husband and my sister made me feel a lot better about life after they read my last entry.

What also helped was a dream I had Friday night. I dreamed that I went to my interview, and it wasn't a job interview, it was a college interview, for an alternative college like Hampshire. I didn't tell the girl interviewing me that I had been to Hampshire already, cause I guess I wanted to start my BA over again. The interview was really free-form; basically she didn't ask any questions, just sat there and waited for me to talk, like a Lacanian psychoanalyst. After a long period of silence, she told me the interview was over and she'd get back to me (but I knew I'd done poorly; I was expected to just talk without being asked to). I was not discouraged; I was angry! I gave her a piece of my mind, letting her know that not only had I done interviews for an alternative school, and done them a hell of a lot better than she was doing, I had graduated from an alternative school, and did really well there. I told her that her interview style was going to filter out a lot of really good students who just weren't big talkers, and she should be more inclusive of shy people.

I woke up feeling validated and confident. The weather on Saturday helped a lot, too. It was beautiful, sunny and warm. I dressed in my new suit and a pair of heels and we set off to Astoria for my interview (Anthony and the baby came along). The feeling of confidence from my dream stayed with me. The interview went really well. The woman interviewing me was very nice, and really only asked me a couple of questions (which I answered with no hesitation, since I had practiced what I would say beforehand) before telling me about the next step in the process. I start training at the end of the month. She also said that usually she asks more questions, but I seemed so qualified that she didn't need to bother. So that was a nice little confidence boost.

We celebrated by going straight to Manhattan, to check out Barnes and Noble, walk around a bit, and eat some Indian food, which I've been craving for months. I really gotta learn how to make that stuff, cause I'm still craving it.

Thinking over my dream again, I realize that it had another meaning for me, outside of giving me some much-needed confidence. It's very telling that in the dream I was interviewing to go back to college. Lately I've been feeling very nostalgic about my college days. I know that makes it sound like college was many moons ago, and it wasn't really. A mere two years ago, I was still working on my Div III (read: thesis, for those who didn't attend Hampshire). But it certainly was in another life, or another chapter of my life. And sometimes I miss those days.

This nostalgia annoys me in some ways, because I know it wasn't as fun at the time as it seems like it was looking back on it. I had a lot of fun in college, but I spent just as much time being miserable. I feel like I started college off on the wrong foot, and did a lot of things I wish I hadn't, and didn't do a lot of things I wish I had. I wish I'd been more involved in activities and less involved in relationships. I had my heart broken my first semester, and spent the rest of my college career breaking other people's hearts. I wish I'd had the balls to take up blacksmithing or study abroad or, I don't know, a million other things.

Things I did do in college that I am proud of:

• Had really good working relationships with several different professors, and learned LOTS from them.
  
• Wrote a Div III, among other things, that I am really proud of, even to this day.
• TAed a couple of classes. I even led a class one day when the professor was gone. ME LEADING A CLASS, HOLY CRAP. I also gave a lesson on Lacan's graph of desire, and did a damn good job of it.
  
• Made attempts to explore my spirituality. I went to meditation groups a few times, studied Buddhism, and attended a Buddism convention.
  
• Got into piercing/tattoo culture. At one time I really had a lot of piercings, most of which I have since taken out. I sometimes miss all the money I spent on piercings that I later removed, and often I miss the piercings themselves. I regret nothing about getting them, though.
  
• Started working at Capacidad. At first I hated that job, and had no f-ing clue what I was doing. But it grew on me and I ended up staying there for almost three years. I worked there until the day before I went into labor. I came back to visit several times with Téa. I miss that job a lot.
  
• Worked at the Social Science office for about three years. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent at the copier, doing the bidding of the faculty. I learned a lot about the S.S. department though, and got to listen in on a lot of gossip.
  
• Kept a journal basically the whole way through college.
  
• Attended a few meetings of a feminist group of some kind, I forget the name of it. But I got to learn about cloth pads and Diva cups and all sorts of neat stuff. Nuff said on that, lest I delve into TMI.
  

There's probably more that I'm not remembering, but all in all, that's a lot to be proud of. Still though, part of me does wish I could start all over. I'm proud of the things I did academically, but not so much socially. I think I could have done a lot better if not for the asshole who broke my tender freshman heart my first semester, but that's a story I'd rather not tell.

This is not to say that I'm unhappy with my current life. I'm glad I'm married to Anthony and very glad, despite the various inconveniences, that I had my daughter. Even though she's teething right now, which I know is going to be trying.

I'll end this entry with a note about my renewed zest for reading. I finished Name All the Animals and Love in the Time of Cholera, which I absolutely hated the ending of, and Anthony laughed at my ranting about it. After that I had to read Jane Austen's Persuasion, because although good ole Jane can be dry, at least her endings are always extremely satisfying. I felt much better at the end of Persuasion when all the loose ends were tied up nicely, although slightly predictably. And then I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which I've had hanging around since we inexplicably found it on the shelf at Capacidad. It was nice and readable and short. A good little break before the book I'm now tackling, Roots by Alex Haley, a 700-page bohemoth which has been sitting in its intimidating, dense way for months. I'm 30 pages in. So far so good. This should consume the next 2-3 weeks of my life.

So that's where I stand on my New Year's Resolution of reading. I'm keeping track of what I read on goodreads.com. One of my little reading goals is to read more of Time's 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to present. I've read 21 of them, which isn't too bad. Roots isn't on there though, so I guess that goal is on hold for the moment.

Anyway, I should sum up so I have a little time to read before the baby wakes up. I'm a little annoyed that my blog entries of late have deviated from Lacanian theory and become more tl;dr about my life, but oh well. I'm going with it.

Breaking down

I keep starting entries, then waiting so long to finish them that they become outdated.

I had a phone interview this week that went well. An in-person interview tomorrow. It seems like a nice part-time job, something I can do evenings and weekends so we don't have to put the baby in daycare. And a job that I have the right experience for, that I could probably be good at.

So why am I so down?

I've had a pit of dread in my belly all week, one that's totally out of proportion to the normal anxiety about a job interview. I haven't felt this awful since I found out I was pregnant.

Well no, that's not true. I felt this awful throughout my pregnancy. I felt awful during those sleep-deprived, lonely first 6 weeks of Téa's life. But certainly more awful now than in recent months.

Not only am I nervous about the interview itself, I have mixed feelings about actually getting a job. First of all, my social anxiety is really getting out of control. Living here has been scary for me since day one, but it seems my agoraphobia is growing by the day. I can't bear to go outside without Anthony, even to do mundane things that I've done before-- going for a walk, picking up some groceries. Even walking to the damn train station to meet him takes some summoning up of courage.

I recently realized that other people do not live like this. And that worries me. I wasn't always like this. What the hell is wrong with me? My hands are shaking as I type.

My second fear about having a job, closely tied to the first: Being away from Téa. It's not that I fear for her welfare; I'm sure Anthony can handle being alone with her. It just feels unnatural that I should be away from her. It feels unnatural to try to feed her from a bottle, as we've had to practice doing lately (she's not taking it well). And I'm still not over the disappointment of finding out my freezer supply of milk is useless, because I'm pretty sure my milk has excess lipase, which makes it curdle really fast unless I scald it, which I haven't been doing. It all just feels wrong to do, when I can just pick her up and nurse her. I don't think she eats just because she's hungry; she wants food AND comfort, which a bottle just can't provide.

I just want to stay home with the baby, although my constant dread has been affecting even that part of my life. I feel like I haven't been a good mother lately. I take care of all her needs, of course, but I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Do I play with her enough? Do I play with her in the right ways? Do I read to her enough? Should I hold her more? Should I talk to her more? I often worry that she's going to end up autistic or poorly socialized because of me. I know she loves going outside and looking at stuff, but I can't bring myself to take her out every day.

I used to clean the house everyday, but now I don't even do that except on weekends. I force myself to make dinner, because I don't want Anthony to spend money on take-out food all the time. My energy is gone. All I ever want to do is sit and read.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I feel embarrassed about having written this all out, knowing who's going to read it and the reactions I'll probably get, but it all had to be said. Something has got to give here, because this just doesn't feel right.

The ineffable

My new preoccupation has become ghost stories. Not the fictional kind; the ones that I like are (or at least claim to be) real personal accounts of supernatural goings-on. Everything from living in haunted houses to seeing weird stuff on the road to Ouija board phenomena. The stuff that really enthralls me is of a religious nature, which is telling.

I think I'm starting to get into one of those periods of my life where I feel the empty spot where religion could be. I spend most of my life happily not thinking about the Big Questions-- why we're here, the purpose of my existence, whether I'm living a good life and what will happen if I die. But every now and then they start to haunt me and I get a hankering to believe in something, anything. And lately things have all been connecting in my head.

Time for bullet points!

• I'm reading Name all the Animals by Alison Smith, a fictionalized memoir of a girl growing up in a very Catholic environment. She wrote that during her childhood, up until her brother died, Jesus was as real a person to her as her parents, and would talk to her. She also writes about praying to a statue of Mary. Sometimes I really wish I had someone or something to pray to. The thought ran through my head the other day that had I grown up in such an environment, I would probably be an exceptional Catholic.
  
• I haven't had any real supernatural experiences, except for playing around with a Ouija board with my best friend when we were 12 or so. We spent a summer talking to this "good" spirit named Nick and a "bad" spirit named 6. These two spirits were at war with each other and would battle over who was speaking to us through the board. One time the planchette was moving around wildly and then flipped over quite violently. I asked my friend why she did that, and she immediately denied it, saying she thought I did it. I don't remember feeling especially frightened through any of it. I'm not sure either of us really believed what was going on, although we also knew we weren''t moving the thing ourselves.
  
• The only other thing close to a supernatural experience I've had was when my family and I were staying at a hotel at Disneyworld, and as we were all drifting off to sleep I felt a very distinct tapping on my forehead, like someone was tapping with their finger. Three firm taps. That also didn't frighten me, although it was surprising.
  
• Reading scary stories tends to freak me out a lot in real life, because despite being nonchalant about the Ouija board when I was twelve, I am a big huge baby when it comes to ghosties and such. So the other night when Anthony and I were laying in bed talking and suddenly the staircase motion detector light came on, I freaked and he ended up going to make sure no one was out there, wielding the knife on his Leatherman.
  
• The next night, we were hanging out in the living room when we heard a noise coming from a plastic shopping bag that was in the middle of the floor (we'd picked up a couple of things earlier and just left it there). I dunno if it was the bag settling or a bug got into it or what, but again I freaked out and Anthony went and stomped it and it stopped making noise. Bottom line: I am SUCH a baby. I think if anything ghostly were to actually happen, I would wet myself and hide under the covers crying for the rest of my life.
  
• I know I'm not using these bullet points correctly but I don't care.

Do I believe most of the stories I read? Yes, yes I do. I don't have any theories about ghosts. However, I do not share my husband's belief that when you die, that's it and you're dead. I think some part of us is eternal. I've dabbled with beliefs about reincarnation and spirits, but really I don't know what to believe. I always thought I'd end up a Buddhist, but I studied Buddhism pretty heavily during my last year of college and it just wasn't compelling.

One of the main reasons I do believe in life after death is my unwavering belief that my grandfather (who died of emphysema several years ago) and my aunt Sam (who died of an aneurism when she was 19) are watching over me. There's no reason or logic behind that belief, and sometimes I feel a little foolish admitting to it, but it's just a feeling I have, almost a hunch.

One January when we were both in college, my sister and I were driving down to Massachusetts in my car. I was going to drop her off at her school on the way to mine (this was at the end of winter break). It was going to be a long trip, so I let her drive first, because I knew how to navigate better once we got into Mass. It was snowing lightly when we left the house, but nothing we were too concerned about.

When we hit the Portland area, the snow had turned into freezing rain. It was eerie. It seemed like it was just rain and the road was just wet, except that ice kept forming on the windshield, and we kept passing cars that had slid off the road and hit the guard rail. I want to say we saw 3 or 4 cars off the road in a 20 or 30 mile stretch. I started to get a little worried, because my sister didn't have a lot of experience driving in bad conditions. I told her to pull off at the next rest area, and she did.

Except, the car slid on the ice on the way into the rest area and ended up smacking headlong into a curb. Long story short, the car was damaged, I didn't know exactly how badly, but certainly didn't want to continue on to Mass, so we turned around and went home.

My mother was so happy to see us get back home safe. She said she had a bad feeling about us making the trip that day, and prayed to Aunt Sam and Grampa to protect us. She took our minor accident as a sign that they were watching over us, keeping us safe from what could've been a worse accident (the ice storm continued on in Massachusetts, so we would've been driving through it the whole way).

Later I was annoyed at my "guardian angels" because it seemed like the accident was going to cost me a lot of money. The repairs cost 950 bucks and my deductible was $500, a whole lot of money I didn't have. As it turned out, the estimate by the insurance company ended up being $1500, so they sent me a check for $1000. I came out of that accident with 50 extra bucks.

I think I've strayed from my point, and also run out of things to say. If any of you (either people I know who read the blog or anonymice who happen to run into it) have any ghostly, supernatural, or related stories to share, please do!

Fatherhood from a mother's perspective.

I've been watching a lot of the A&E show Intervention, and sort of psychoanalyzing as I watch. A lot of factors in the addicts' lives repeat. Almost all the addicted women were molested or raped, usually as children. A lot of them had absent or weak fathers, and try in their adult lives to make up for this by dating much older men. Of course, all I can think of when I watch this show is Téa. I've made Anthony re-watch a few episodes with me to warn him about how NOT to be a father.

One particularly disturbing episode featured a girl who couldn't swallow. She had a feeding tube put directly into her stomach as a teenager, because she just stopped eating. She said she experienced massive fear and panic when she put food in her mouth, because as a child she was forced to perform oral sex on a man. Really fascinating how trauma shows up in the body.

The father figure is a huge part of Lacanian theory. The symbolic father (which is not necessarily the biological father) is crucial in a child's psychological development. The symbolic father is whoever or whatever becomes the Name-of-the-Father metaphor, which disrupts the mother-child dyad. I've written about this dyad in other entries; the child desperately trying to be what the mother desires, and the mother sort of just letting that happen, maybe hoping that her desire can or will be fulfilled by the child (again, all this is unconscious).

"In French, 'Name' and 'No' are almost the same word (nom/non), and so 'Name of the Father' becomes 'No of the Father.' This 'no' is a prohibition-- no, you cannot become (the mother's desire). In order for the child to function in the symbolic register, of society's laws and symbols, the fantasy of becoming the complement to the mother's lack cannot be maintained."

The Name of the Father is Lacan's take on symbolic castration, which Freud wrote about. The result of this is the child coming into the symbolic register, which is basically the world of language and the laws of society, and becoming a "desiring subject." This is also the beginning of the unconscious, which is a whole other can of worms.

When the child becomes a subject of desire, she also takes on a structure-- one of three: neurotic, psychotic, and perverted. These are not psychopathological; everyone fits into one of these three structures. They have nothing to do with mental illness or pedophilia. "Structures are a way of organizing the subject's discourse, conscious and unconscious experiences, and the way one experiences one's own body" (quoted from my thesis).

I'll write more about the neurotic and psychotic structures at some point, because they are fascinating. The structures always struck me as the most interesting and disturbing part of Lacanian theory.

The law of the father must come through the mother. Sometimes the mother does not let the Name of the Father get through clearly, or at all. When the mother completely blocks the Name of the Father, the child ends up with a psychotic structure. When the mother lets it through but dismisses its importance, the child ends up in the perverted structure.

"The mother and child have a pact, essentially, that they are outside the law-- cultural prohibitions do not apply to them. The pervert knows what's right and wrong, but she does not live by these rules." (from my thesis, again)

A lot of the male addicts on Intervention really seemed like they must be in the perverted structure. They often lacked a father figure and were spoiled by their mothers. I always feared that if I had a son (this structure most often happens in boys), I would end up having this kind of "we're above the law" pact with him. Actually, when I had my big plans to write a novel last year (pre-Téa), I was going to write about a woman who gives birth to a son, and ends up with that kind of relationship with him.

Fathers are so important. I feared for a while about what kind of father Anthony would be. His own dad was abusive, absent when he should have been present, and only present in the most damaging ways. Anthony admitted to me the other day that he was afraid he'd end up being the kind of dad his father was. If that were to happen (I told him), I would do what his mother failed to do, and leave.

I think getting that fear off his chest was a relief for him, though, because lately he's been bonding with the baby much more than before. I think men find babies a little difficult because they are so mommy-centered, especially breastfeeding babies. Téa has become my heart and soul, and I wouldn't be surprised if Anthony's felt a little left out. But lately he's been playing with her, talking to her, dancing with her (which is adorable). He's taking his place as the third figure in our little Oedipal world.

Which is great for me, because finally I can take a shower or a nap without being interrupted by her where-did-mommy-go screams.