Happy Father's Day to Toyin

I don't often tell Toyin how much I appreciate his good parenting. But today seems like an appropriate time to say that he's a great dad. He loves Annika more than anything or anyone else in the world. He's never said that to me, but I can tell that it's true by the way he cares for her and how he responds to her.

Single men, particularly, Black men, are stereotyped in this country as being lame partners, deadbeat dads, generally bad fathers. But I want to take this opportunity to say that Toyin does not, and has never fit that negative image. He has gone far above what most people in this country expect of typical single dads who are not living with or married to their child's mother.

Annika was not planned. Toyin gave up a promising job in a new city filled with new friends to come live in Austin and be with us. He supported us for the first year and a half so that I could stay at home with Annika, thus securing a solid start to her life.

He sees her every day, even when it's not his night to take her.

He is kind, loving and attentive.

He's a good dad.

Happy Father's Day Toyin!

My daughter is NOT the color of food

I think I finally get it. At least -- as much as a White person can "get it." And I'm even going to attempt writing about it, even though I'm not sure I can explain it.

Yesterday a White woman casually referred to Annika as "caramel-skinned."

She wasn't being racist or malicious. But in some ways that is exactly the problem.

She was reminding me that we'd met before and in her attempt to describe Annika she used the phrase. Likely it's her uber-liberal, supposedly open-minded way of attempting to connect to people of color without using such banal terms as "Black" or "African American."

I'm not a big fan of such terms as descriptors either. Not that there's anything wrong with saying them. What it comes down to is that they're overused, not that they should be changed to something less baggage-filled.

Living in Detroit for nine years, I got schooled in all the subconscious slights that we Whites/Caucasians make toward Blacks/African Americans.

It's not real racism. It's the kind of undercurrent that we (Whites) completely miss. It's so ingrained in us that it's normal that we don't understand some of the hostility we receive. Hell, a lot of the hostility that's doled out is subconscious and ingrained as well.

Toyin and I have had some pretty enlightening conversations about race.

But even so, since becoming Annika's mother, I have been on the end of such missteps by other White folks and actually felt the icky feelings.

When I was still pregnant I overheard a White woman telling a little girl that she liked her "puff balls."

She was talking about her hair.

I'm sure the woman meant no harm, but I was irritated as fuck by it. And I didn't even know the little girl.

Later on in my pregnancy I was taking a trip to see Toyin in Detroit. On the airplane I was sitting next to a White woman about my age and we got to chatting. She was a mother of two, so she was interested in hearing all about my birth plans and the father of my child.

As mothers do, we fell into talking about things that most strangers would not talk about, TMI subjects like poop, childhood bi-polarism, pregnancy sex, and then lice.

I had mentioned that Toyin was African, so she knew that I was carrying a bi-racial child.

When the topic of lice came up, I said, "Ooooh, that sounds gross. I so hope I never have to deal with that."

She replied, "Oh, no, you won't. They (lice) don't like horse hair."

I couldn't breathe for a few seconds. I felt like I had been kicked in the gut. Did she just compare my child's hair to animal hair?

Yes, yes she did.

I stuttered for a few seconds and said something that passed for a response.

She looked uncomfortable. We talked for a few minutes to pretend like nothing had happened. Then we fell into a silence for a time.

She probably didn't mean anything by it. It was probably so ingrained in her upbringing and since I am White, she fell into the trap of saying racist things to other Whites without fear of indignation.

And in case you're wondering, as Toyin did. I did not misunderstand her. It just reminded me that it was a common comparison that I had heard growing up in west Texas.

So, back to the overuse of the terms, African American and Black.

Nothing wrong with it, when used correctly or in the right context. But as Toyin explained to me once when I told him I didn't see anything wrong with using them as descriptors he said to me, "Yes, but why does it always have to be the first descriptor. How often to you describe someone as the White person? You would use the hair color, or height or what color shirt he/she is wearing." 

This might seem benign to some. I can say that at some point in my life, it certainly did to me.

But now, as a mother, I have begun to see how what others think of you can define you in many ways. It takes a strong and mature person to fight against stereotypes and even then, people don't always manage to fight them successfully.

So, really, changing her descriptors to something that sounds sweet or delicious doesn't change the fact that you are using her skin color to describe who she is.

The soothing stirring of homemade soap and sour cream sauce

My love of soap making began when I started making homemade chicken (sometimes spinach mushroom) enchiladas with sour cream sauce.

This may come as a surprise to those who know me best and know that my favorite movie is Fight Club. But my desire to learn how to make soap did not come from Tyler Durden, although, I do think it would be super awesome to sell rich women's fat asses back to them in the form of cosmetic soap.

But really, I love to make soap because I love to stir. Soapmaking is about four percent ingredients and about and hour or two of stirring. I figure I must have been a witch in a former life (shut up Toyin) because I feel so very at home standing over a simmering pot.

This is not something I figured out early on in life. It actually took many years of stirring that sauce to realize how much I loved it.

My first go around with making those enchiladas with sour cream sauce ended up with way over-spiced enchiladas; a huge fight with my new (now ex) husband; tears; a night out at a bar drinking with a strange man; and watching a middle-aged Japanese woman shoot a cut up banana out of her twat. But that's a story for another day.

The enchiladas got eaten. My husband and I made up, and eventually got divorced, but not before I continued making those damn enchiladas and stirring the sauce. And stirring it. And stirring it.

Then one day, years after that first time I made enchiladas, I was cooking them for a small dinner party and chatting with my best friend on the phone. It was likely that I was in a mellow state of mind at the time, which was pretty common for me after I got divorced and before I had a child. As I stood over the lovely mixture of sour cream, corn starch, spices and chicken broth I said to her, "Damn, I love to make sauce."

I don't know when I had realized it, but I did. I loved making that sauce. There was something so very soothing about watching the mixture glob together, become clumpy and then eventually smooth out. All I had to do was stand there, stare at it, and stir it.

I haven't made those enchiladas in a long time. Toyin is lactose intolerant so I never made them while we were living together. But I started learning how to make soap.

I made some soap last week. And don't you know, ever since I've had a craving for those damn enchiladas.

Proof that Annika is not just an extension of me

This week Annika has let us know that she's been paying attention to what's going on with her life. Out of the blue, she said to Toyin, "Annika two homes." Then a couple of days later she said it to me. We weren't talking about Toyin or homes or anything that would prompt it, so clearly, it's been on her mind.

This completely trips me out. My 21-month-old child has figured out on her own that she has two homes and has been thinking about it completely independent of any discussion.

I know that children are separate people from their parents; that they are not just extensions of us. Before I had a child it seemed pretty obvious.

But ever since I carried Annika in my womb for 9 months along with having her cling to me for literally all of her basic necessities like sustenance, help falling asleep, carrying her before she could walk, and soothing, and as she gained a bit of independence, still helping her transition from one state to another, guiding about 90 percent of her motions throughout life, it was hard to accept the reality that she truly is a whole other person.

Then bam! Just like that, she throws it in my face. "Hey Mom, I have thoughts."

Annika has her own thoughts.

Wow.

The past couple of months have clearly been difficult for her. She's apparently been processing our split. Almost three months after we moved into different apartments, she's figured it out.

"Annika two homes." 

I know at some point we told her that we would not be living together anymore, but at 19 months it must be a hard concept to understand. I mean really, think about it, the concept that you poop and pee in a bowl instead of a diaper is difficult to understand.

I can't even imagine how she finally came to the conclusion.

Toyin has been telling her that we go to Mommy's home and then to Daddy's home. I guess it finally sank in.

The notion that she's been processing our split and finally come to some conclusions on her own is also proof that sometimes parents really have no idea what kind of stuff their children are thinking about.

It gives me some clarity on why parents are often at a loss as to why their children behave in ways they don't understand.

It scares me a little to think that already my child has thoughts and problems weighing on her mind that I don't have a clue about. All I know is that I worried about our split and processed it pretty quickly. I suppose I thought she had done the same.

It's pretty cool that she told both of us what she's been thinking about. It's also proof that kids don't often make a big deal out of talking like adults do. Parents have to pay attention and snag the big stuff or it will get lost in the chatter.

This divulgence gives me even more incentive to stay connected to her, to stay close to her so that she will feel comfortable enough to talk to me whenever she needs help or clarity in her life.

I wish I had had that growing up.

My Dad told me once that he remembers when I was first in college, I came home one day and was moping around. He asked me what was wrong. I told him I was depressed. He said to me, "Oh, just get over it."

Yeah.

I'm not going to go there. 

The funny thing is, I don't remember the incident. But he does. Or, he did anyway. I guess even when parents don't say the right thing or know what to say, their kids problems stick with them.

As for me, I hope that even when I don't say the right thing, it will still be loving and obvious to Annika that I'm at least trying, that I love her unconditionally and that no matter how her life turns out or how she chooses to live, I will love her wholeheartedly.

One thing that I want to do differently than my parents did is to give Annika a secure base to work with so that she will always be on solid ground emotionally. I never had that. And it's the one thing I needed.

Trial sleepover

This weekend an ear infection snuck up on me and Saturday at 6 p.m., after Annika had spent the day with Toyin, I called him and said I really needed him to attempt keeping her that night. I told him I was in so much pain and felt so crappy that I didn't think I could be a good mother that night.

He was hesitant to try it. He said he thought the plan had always been that would work up to it, but I was insistent. I could not be the nighttime parent tonight.

This wasn't how we had envisioned it. I'm not really sure how we envisioned it, but this was definitely not it. There would have been more planning and we would have talked to Annika about it. Other than that, I have no idea how it would go. Toyin hasn't put Annika to sleep in several months. He wasn't even sure what our routine was anymore.

For instance, he wasn't aware that she didn't really need to nurse to sleep anymore. I still do nurse her to sleep most nights, but occasionally nursing is just a distraction and she falls asleep without it. I imagined that he would do everything I do to get her sleepy, except nurse and then just cuddle her to sleep.

He asked me to bring a couple of things and leave them outside. I brought the stuff he requested along with her favorite books and a teddy bear.

He did not follow my usual routine. He stuck to his own regimen of walking, which is how he put her sleep when she was an infant. At first he drove her for a while. She got sleepy, but didn't fall asleep. Then he walked her around his building to and around the apartment until she fell asleep.

She awoke around 11 p.m. after falling asleep at 9.

He was able to get her back to sleep with more walking, but she awoke again at midnight and cried for 30 minutes before he called me and said he was bringing her home.

By then I had had several hours of uninterrupted sleep dosed up on ibuprofen and Vitamin C and I although I was not 100 percent, I was feeling much better and welcomed her home. She fell asleep after nursing heavily for about 20 minutes.

At that point I had not nursed since the morning and I was pretty engorged, so I was a little relieved to have her home. I guess even a part of me felt some reassurance that it wasn't so easy to stay over at Toyin's. She still needs me. 

This situation snuck up on us and I wonder in amazement that this is the first time in 21 months that I have been unable to care for Annika every single night.

I also wonder how things would go if I was totally incapacitated. She would be fine. Toyin would probably be in worse shape. He was pretty stressed about the whole situation.

So, now, I wonder when and if we should start hard core planning for her first real sleepover. Part of me is so ready for it I can taste an entire night alone in my own bed, able to be loud in the house, able to do whatever I want without worrying that she will wake up and need me.

But the other part of me, the mama bear in me, says, no, she's not ready. We should wait until she's completely ready and even excited at the prospect of spending the night with Daddy.

But that could be another year or more.

I would love to hear and suggestions or ideas for helping us transition Annika to the idea of spending the night at dad's.

Setting the stage for gentle separation

This morning as Annika left with Toyin I was struck by how gently and lovingly we've managed to pull off our split.

Toyin showed up around 9 a.m. Annika was running around half naked. I had been hoping she'd use the potty. I was still cooking breakfast. As he came in she instructed him to take his coat off, which he did. We ate breakfast. Afterward I asked her to brush her teeth and I combed her hair while Toyin held her. Then I got her clothes out, I put on her pants and shirt, and finished the job with sweater, jacket, hat, shoes and socks.

About 45 minutes after he arrived they were walking out the door with her Elmo backpack filled with her animals and holding her baby doll.

There was no crying. There was animosity between Toyin and myself. There was no "hurry up, your father is coming to get you." There was no set time for him to pick her up or get her out the door. There was none of the scene that I always imagine it is between parents who split up. It was more like how I imagine a father would be leaving with his kid just to hang out for a day without mom.

As they left I was reminded of my (apparently unfounded) fears and worries that splitting up would somehow make this more like a jagged edge in Annika's life rather than just letting it simply unfold.

When I was pregnant Toyin brought up custody and visitation rights. Something in me snapped when he started talking about that stuff. I didn't want to go there. I wanted to be able to just talk things out with him. I never wanted a judge or a court to decide for us when Annika would be where. I didn't want her holidays to be pre-determined for years.

So we started off her life unsure about the future. Of course, nothing is ever for sure, but that first year, we were in such uncharted territory, sometimes it could be downright scary. I often wondered if I had made the right decision, living with Toyin and asking for his financial support.

Sometimes I wonder how things would have been different.

I think Toyin and Annika would not be as close if we had gone the typical route. I also don't think Annika and I would be as close. I would have been more stressed and I also would have been working. Toyin may or may not have stayed here or even moved to Texas if we had gone the typical route.

So, I guess, we made the right decision. It feels to good to know that for once I got something right. 

It doesn't feel like divorce ... to me

Now that Toyin and I have moved into separate apartments, my fears about how Annika will feel and react to the separation are beginning to manifest in my head.

I've gone through a divorce and this separation feels nothing like it. To me, Toyin and I splitting into two households feels more like moving away from a roommate. When I got divorced, even though I knew it was the right move, it was still difficult. This is not difficult.

Our relationship will continue on with no hard feelings and without disruption.

When I got divorced I was uprooted from a life that I thought was going to be permanent. Marriage isn't supposed to be temporary. Neither is parenting. Neither is having two parents.

So, I'm guessing that somehow our split feels to Annika like her parents are getting divorced even though she does not have the skills to articulate that. (And she doesn't know what a divorce is.)

My biggest problem here is that I don't know what that feels like. I wonder if it will be difficult for her even though it is not hard on us.

I am unusual in that I did not deal directly with divorce much as a child. My parents are still married. Growing up, all of my closest friends had parents who were still married. (Church friends mostly in case you're wondering.)

What knowledge I do have about what it feels like to have divorced parents is based on adult friends talking about divorced parents and watching children of my adult friends deal with their parents' divorces or non-marriages.

Examples of things I've witnessed include: wanting their parents to get back together, poor self-esteem, feeling like they don't have a father, ill-conceived neuroses, and inconsistency between the two parents.

I realized that the examples I've included are mostly based on my own worries that I will be the cause of such problems simply by not being married to Annika's dad. But looking at my list I realize that most of them are either baseless in our situation or something I will have no control over.

Her reaction to the change seems pretty minimal.

The only change I've noticed in Annika this week is that she hasn't been sleeping as well as usual, but she has a history of bad sleep patterns. And there are other contributing factors like, she has a cold this week, not to mention that we haven't been eating all that well because of moving.

So far she has called out during the night for Da Da and Baltar (the dog) several times. But she has also shouted out "back," "shoes," and "move" as well.

So I wonder if our separation will be a blip on her radar or if she will be scarred for life. Likely it is something in between, and I'm hoping that it is closer on the spectrum to the blip and not the scarred-for-life.

I am doing my best to stay relaxed about the possibility that this could screw Annika up, especially since that fear is based on a general notion in our society that somehow children who come from married parents are better off than children who come from divorced parents.

But this isn't a divorce. Divorce typically comes with lots of bad feelings, fighting, judges, courts, financial disputes and immature behavior by the parents.

None of that is happening in our case.

I've think the best thing to do is relax, don't project potential problems, thereby causing them to happen, and observe.

Even though it's only been a few days since we have been staying apart, things are going well. Toyin ate dinner with us when he picked Annika up last night. He even brought cookies.

It doesn't feel like a divorce to me or Toyin, so I am telling myself that it probably doesn't feel that way to Annika either.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

This was the plan all along

A few people have made comments to me about being sorry that Toyin and I split up so I figured it was necessary to explain a little more about our situation.

We dated for a while almost five years ago. When we broke up, we maintained our friendship. We also had intimate moments here and there (obviously) but it was pretty clear early on in our dating life that we were not compatible.

When I got pregnant Toyin agreed to move to Austin and support me for the first year so I could stay at home with Annika. We agreed that it was the ideal first year for her and we were fortunate enough to be able to afford it.

For the past six months we have been working out some details and we also continued living together because we had a lease.

But we are finally ready to go our separate ways and become regular single parents.

So far so good.

While living together, we functioned as a couple in many ways, which means that we fought like couples do on occasion. We had a lot of the same issues that many couples do, but without any motivation to fix them since it was a temporary situation.

I'm not going to get into any gory details, but lets just say that if we really were a couple, we'd definitely need some counseling if we were going to stay together.

This is a good move and it is a significant step in our family and in our co-parenting relationship. I can already feel a lot of pressure lifting and I think Toyin and I are headed toward an even better friendship than we had before.

Co-parenting as an alternative lifestyle

In a recent e-mail from a reader our family life was referred to as an alternative lifestyle choice.

For those of you who are not aware of our situation, Toyin and I are exes who chose to live together during the first year/s of Annika's life so that I could stay at home with her. We made the choice for financial reasons.

When my reader made that comment, it got me thinking. Could this situation that Toyin and I have created become an option that might become more common in the future?

Current trends indicate that it could. At least, in my opinion. I've not seen any research to support my theory, just in case anyone is wondering.

But if you think about it, look at the way youngsters today behave in and view relationships.

When I was in my 20s, sex was way more casual than for instance, my parent's generation. One might sleep around with random partners, but it was for fun, or the result of too much partying. But casual sex aside, a relationship remained the goal.

To our parents, casual sex was typically out of the question, or so they said.

Now that casual sex seems to have become even more normalized, it begs the question, will this generation be more careful about birth control, therefore having less unplanned children?

Or will unplanned children just become used to a different standard of family. I think this generation is savvy enough to figure out that there are more choices than: A.) Getting married, B.) Being a single mom with a deadbeat dad C.) Having a weekend-only dad.

Our family works. Like I said in a previous post, some days it works really well, and some days it is a living hell. But it works as well as any marriage. Maybe better than some, not as well as others. Some people find it odd, and most people question how we do it. The most common question I get is, will it continue indefinitely?

Our current situation will not continue indefinitely. The current plan is that during the next year some time, we will not live together anymore. But we will always parent together. We haven't discussed the semantics of visitation or custody. I hope that we never have the need to talk about that stuff. When I was pregnant Toyin once started talking about going to court and drawing up custody papers.

I almost fell apart. Here my kid wasn't even born yet and battle lines were already being drawn.
I didn't blame him or get angry at him (although, it is possible I yelled, which I have a tendency to do...), I understood that those seemed like the natural options.

So I said to him, "Hey, lets see if we can work together on this and make our own decisions." I told him that I never wanted some judge to make parenting decisions for us.

He agreed pretty wholeheartedly if I remember correctly. I think he might have even been relieved.

We agreed to live together for the first year and see how things went. Annika is almost 16 months now and we are still living together. We are talking about moving into separate places, which will probably happen over the course of the next six months or maybe sooner.

Toyin has said he plans to see Annika every day. That is about all we have talked about. I plan to see her every day as well, unless she and Toyin are on a trip together.

We plan on living as close by each other as possible so that Annika can have the best of both worlds.

Ironically, I was thinking about how the religious right has been making such a fuss over gay marriage, saying that gay marriage is going to ruin marriage as an institution, then quietly, here we heteros have come along and snuck up on them with a scenario that nobody ever even thought of.

You can have kids WITHOUT getting married. HA! Take that bitches!

For about five minutes I was a lesbian

It finally happened.
Using the term "partner" for Toyin, my co-parent and the father of my daughter, made it appear to someone that I am a lesbian.
To clarify, I don't mind lesbians. I have had, over the years, plenty of gay friends. But I am not gay.
It was pretty amusing. I always imagine that most people in my age group, like me, enjoy having gay friends. It makes us hipper, more diverse, and appearing to be very open-minded. How cool to go to a playgroup with a lesbian and her bi-racial baby! Now that's some serious points on the diversity scale. My new friend is, I believe, Asian, so maybe she cares less about that than me.
Here's what happened.
After a few months of haggling with calling Toyin my boyfriend (which he's not, but it's easier); trying to refer to him as Annika's dad; or just using his name and leaving off any modifier, I finally settled on calling him my partner while speaking of him to people who don't know us very well.
I knew it could be confusing to some people since it's common for gay couples to refer to their significant others as partners, so I always tried to make sure I referred to him as Annika's dad or use a male pronoun before I used the term "my partner." But I have gotten so comfortable using the term, that, without any forethought, I casually mentioned him as my partner to a woman I had just met in a playgroup.
After a couple minutes of talking she asked me if I had Annika with my partner or with someone else.
"What an odd question," I thought to myself as I answered her that, no, I had Annika with my current partner.
About ten seconds later it hit me and I smirked.
"She thinks I'm a lesbian," I realized.
Hee hee hee.
For a few minutes I felt like a very hip, urban stay-at-home mom lesbian whose partner was probably some sort creative type, a commercial photographer, a music producer or something like that who made lots of money to support her little bi-racial baby and breastfeeding lover.
In my head, if I was gay, my partner would be super cool, with lots of tattoos and piercings. I don't know why, because most gay people I know don't have any more tatts or piercings than anyone else I know, but it's my fantasy, so I can do what I want.
But alas, the fairy tale came to an end when I finally decided to tell her a little about Toyin and made sure to use male pronouns a lot.
She didn't seem disappointed. Hopefully, my coolness is still high up there since I am an unmarried mom to a black baby.
I remember a day and a place when that would have just made me a slut.